Perhaps we should follow New Zealand Cricket's latest brainstorm and use the "selection pie" (nothing to do with Jesse Ryder's eating habits) when it comes to elections.
Martin Crowe
Hone Harawira
You've probably missed it, but there's an election going on this week ...
As candidate-baiting is not yet an Olympic event, most sensible readers have stuck to the sports pages and avoided all the brouhaha.
However, I did feel it my duty to cast an eye over the various manifestoes - and, sadly, I found sporting policy in short supply.
Labour's plan to raise the retirement age suggests Phil Goff doesn't realise that Martin Crowe's "comeback" is over, while National's proposed asset sales would just put more All Blacks into foreign ownership.
The Greens player-coach Russel Norman has shown himself to be a decent kayaking prospect, but closing down the Cemetery Circuit because of excessive exhaust fumes hardly seems fair. Neither does the Maori Party's idea of an automatic World Cup spot for the NZ Maori team.
Noted racing buff Winston Peters did well with his nag Baubles Of Office, but his policy of flogging a dead horse may scare off the voters.
Perhaps we should follow New Zealand Cricket's latest brainstorm and use the "selection pie" (nothing to do with Jesse Ryder's eating habits) when it comes to elections.
This week they unveiled how to tick the right box - significant performance (worth 35 per cent), consistent performance (25 per cent), contribution to the team (15 per cent), fitness (10 per cent), fielding (10 per cent) and intuition (5 per cent). Sounds like it could be the system to replace MMP ... anything so long as we don't adopt Fifa's policy of handing out millions of dollars to buy votes.
So if sport cannot learn anything from the politicians, can the politicos learn anything from sport? Possibly so in the area of law and order.
Bad behaviour at the Rugby World Cup has seen Samoan team manager Tuala Mathew Vaea fined 100 pigs. That's the sort of penalty that will get gang members toeing the line.
And, in an interesting spin on ping-pong diplomacy, North and South Korea - technically at war since the 1950s - teamed up to take on India and Pakistan (fighting over Kashmir) in a table tennis tournament aimed at promoting peace between rivals.
So how about pimpled bats at the ready for Goff and John Key in a doubles match against Don Brash and Hone Harawira?
U-20 world cup
Peter O'Hara is the former director of New Zealand Football charged with assessing suitable venues for the 2015 Under-20 World Cup. Unfortunately, his home city of Wanganui won't be among them.
A Chronicle sports reporter as a teenager in the 1960s, O'Hara said he would have been delighted if Wanganui had been in the running for what is world soccer's second biggest tournament after the Fifa World Cup.
When the interim project manager described it as "a fantastic opportunity", he was spot on. The tournament is televised in 200 countries to a global audience of almost 500 million. But O'Hara said Fifa had stringent requirements on stadiums and training facilities. That seems to have ruled out the city that sent James Musa to this year's under-20 World Cup in Colombia.
Perhaps we should be doing something to catch up with the likes of Whangarei, New Plymouth, Nelson and Napier which are all in the running to host matches.
Test cricket tops
I am sure I am not the only one who thinks that a meeting between two of the world's major cricketing nations merits more than a two-test series - especially in view of the fact that the South Africa v Australia matches proved so memorable.
Test cricket is the ultimate form of the sport and those running the game must acknowledge that.
