OPINION:
As we enter the year's shortest days we also approach its sleepless nights.
Test cricket in England plays havoc with the body's circadian rhythms but it is wonderful for the soul.
A comfortable couch, blanket-and-pillow, strong coffee, a packet of Mackintosh's, cheese-on-toast in the "lunch" break, a warming dram of your favourite single malt, quality test cricket – it's possible that life gets better but I'm sceptical.
The first session is rarely a challenge, but those lids tend to get heavy in the middle session. Watching cricket in a hypnagogic state can be quite trippy. Whether it's a good trip or a bad one depends largely on the state of the game when you recover full alertness during the last hour.
The odd power nap is recommended (though not necessarily with 20 overs to go of the ODI World Cup final, only to wake to find a bunch of Englishmen celebrating wildly).
There is an expectancy that New Zealand will perform well against England and make those long nights worth it.
For me, it feels a little more lottery-like. It has been a wet spring with plenty of rain-affected and rain-ruined matches in the County Championship. A combination of damp wickets and the celebrated Dukes ball has seen a number of epic top-order collapses.
Yes, England are weakened without the injured Ben Stokes and Jofra Archer and the resting Jos Buttler and Sam Curran, but they still have Stuart Broad and James Anderson – a new-ball partnership that has a mere 1131 wickets between them.
A lost toss and a tricky Lord's wicket and both will be salivating at the prospect of tearing into a lineup that hasn't faced a red ball in anger since January.
There are several questions to be answered, not least whether Ross Taylor can rediscover his touch and get himself on the Lord's honours board in what will likely be his final attempt.
Will Gary Stead muscle Devon Conway into the lineup, stick with Tom Blundell, or elevate Will Young, who did his chances no harm by playing the opening four matches of the county season for Durham, notching two centuries at the top of the order?
Can New Zealand's vaunted attack function as smoothly without the absent Trent Boult?
Will Daryl Mitchell keep Colin de Grandhomme on the sidelines?
It's that uncertainty that makes this such a tantalising series; a series worth losing a lot of sleep over.
Thomas Tuchel
There was a time when the prospect of Chelsea winning the Champions League was laughable. That time was only a few months ago, when a clearly overwhelmed Frank Lampard was adding more ammunition to the theory that great players rarely make great managers.
Tuchel's turnaround has been in some respects revelatory, but it might be wise to pump the brakes on affording him messianic qualities. He did, after all, inherit a squad that had close to $390 million spent on it during the off-season for expressly this purpose.
What you cannot deny, however, is that he won the strategic battle over his rival, the otherworldly successful Pep Guardiola.
Naomi Osaka
Well, she hasn't won this battle about whether she needs to engage with the media yet, but here's hoping.
That might sound like an odd position for a sports reporter to take but for me, the bigger conceit is that anybody should be compelled to talk to the media, whether by contractual obligation or implication that it is "part of the job".
I would go even further and say that the charade of the organised press conference, media scrums, and prescribed availability has made sport a worse product.
Some athletes will enjoy media interaction, others will hate it. Some will seek attention, others will shrink from it.
Good, that's how characters evolve, good and bad. Not establishing a relationship with the media – and by extension the public – probably harms more athletes than it helps, especially commercially, but so be it, it should be their choice.
Instead, these staged interactions serve only to provide boilerplate quotes that clog up stories and bulletins that would have been a lot better without them.
If athletes were not forced to interact with the media there would be far less need for that scourge of sports journalism – the communications departments of teams and sporting organisations (and yes, that was partly tongue-in-cheek – some do it a lot better than others).
Scott Dixon
Using the excuse of a pre-Lord's trial run, the alarm went off at an ungodly hour for the 105th running of the Indianapolis 500.
It was a bad mistake, with close to two hours of some of the most inane build-up to a big event that I have had the misfortune to waste my audio-visual senses on.
That was followed by a bland race where "our" man Dixon was shafted when he was trapped out on course as his tank emptied, unable to come in for $40 of unleaded 91 because some lesser light had crashed his car while slowing down to enter the pits (arguably the most interesting thing to happen in the race).
As a closet motorsport fan in awe of the risks drivers and motorcycle riders take each time they start their engine it feels completely irresponsible to say this, especially on a weekend where Moto3 rider Jason Dupasquier died after crashing and being hit by another bike, but that race could really have done with more yellow flags.
Chiefs
Well, someone had to be the first.
The Reds showed the formula for beating the New Zealand teams is to give them a really niggly travel schedule, play a large chunk of the game with more personnel, run out to an unassailable lead and then stand by and watch it nearly be assailed.
The Aussies are on the board though, and it always felt like this was the most likely fixture to get off the schneid.
Sundown on Super Rugby
It is scary for the future financial prospects of "Super" rugby to think that in NZ, with no South African teams any more, the most powerful motivation is not to be the one to lose to an Aussies side. Australian sides are no longer competitive with New Zealand's, but their administrators won't address the player depth issue for political reasons. Initiatives to create Pacific Island teams are driven by politics and sentiment and don't stack up financially, while a competitive Argentine franchise is left out in the cold. The New Zealand division has been won by the same team five years straight (not something which will generate much excitement among casual viewers outside of Christchurch). Yet NZ Rugby propaganda is full of blinkered optimism. "Subject to New Zealand Rugby [NZR] board approval and key conditions being met, the international federation's executive committee has approved a £1.2 million [$2.34m] annual funding package for an initial three-year period to support the two franchises, Fijian Drua and Moana Pasifika. Both franchises will also be supported by their respective unions and private equity funding," says the NZR. "The decision was made following a detailed financial, performance and commercial feasibility study in partnership with NZR and the respective unions. The funding is conditional on these franchises satisfying the necessary financial criteria for entry." Really? Talk about an elephant in the room. Everyone keeps saying in the press how important it is and how wonderful it will be, while ignoring the fact that no one has yet been identified who is willing or able to pay for it. - Steven Bryce (letter abridged and edited for clarity)
Thanks, Steven. Fundamentally, you're probably right. Super Rugby is an unholy mess. As hard as I've tried to find positives in SR Transtasman you just have to throw your hands up and say it hasn't worked.
The finalists will be decided by which teams can lay the biggest humiliation down upon their opponents, which is hardly the bedrock for a quality comp.
The outline for future tournaments as you've alluded to looks unworkable, but here's a question I want to throw out to the rugby public, if there's still such a thing?
What's the solution?
People point to the glorious early years of the Super 12 but don't kid yourself – a lot of that was novelty factor and even before some of the more ill-conceived expansion efforts, fans had switched off from games against most South African opposition.
It is easy (and justifiable) to offer chapter and verse about the ills of Super Rugby in its current, recent past, and proposed future state, but what are the alternatives?
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