Ireland didn't play England at cricket yesterday, and what's more, they didn't win. The match is going ahead later on today. And today is Wednesday. All day.

The ICC Cricket World Cup starts today. Here are seven reason not to watch it.

I'm better than you. Here's why

1.  The Obsession.  The nation is obsessed with the vuvuzela.  It’s impossible to read a newspaper, listen to the radio, watch the television, go to the pub, or read an internet humour site without someone bleating on about vuvuzelas.  But I think that this focus on the vuvuzela is causing us to miss out on other World Cup stories.  We’re just not getting enough ill-informed conjecture about problems with the ball: Is it that it’s...

1.  History. You get no sense of history watching a match on television.  If you go to the Milton End at Fratton Park though, you can see an impressive recreation of the football experience in Victorian times.  If it weren’t for the presence of “ladies” and the absence of flat-caps and rattles I would have believed I’d gone back in time.  They even exhorted their team to “play up.”  Nobody’s done that since colour was...