Watch This Space
To the consternation of seasoned Shoaib Akhtar watchers everywhere, the Pakistani fast bowler's move to Surrey has not been the sort of seamless transition beloved of Honda adverts and United Russia. UK immigration has decided that he does not have clearance to work here.

Shoaib has returned to Pakistan to renew his work visa for the UK but has pledged that he could not be more committed to turn out for a team with an overflowing bank balance but pitiful bottom line in the Championship: "I am desperate to play for Surrey."

How desperate exactly? Well, let's think back to his most recent dalliance with county cricket at Worcestershire three summers ago.

"Players like that are no good to our club. In fact, Shoaib has been no good for any club he's been at," New Road chairman John Elliot told Sporting Life in 2005. "It's all about team spirit and getting the dressing room right and when you've got a bloke like Shoaib in there, it can cause mayhem. He's a superstar and just does what he wants."

In Shoaib's defence, the UK immigration system is in chaos. While a unique talent and world-famous performer has been refused immediate chance to work, an unskilled new arrival by the name of Mohammad Sami has slipped through the net and has already started graft at Sussex.

Analysis Of The Week
How on earth to explain England's remarkable renaissance under Kevin Pietersen?

Paul Collingwood certainly had an explanation for his successor's inspirational X factor, telling the Guardian: "He's a typical South African."

Poor Colly
While Collingwood was providing that reason for England's puzzling success in an interview entitled 'Collingwood admits captaincy was ruining his life', KP had another revelation to share: "I'm very fortunate that I have a wife who has been in the spotlight for a lot longer than I have.

"She had seven or eight years of a very successful music career and I can go home and she can talk to me about stuff and we can chuck ideas around together and I know Colly didn't have that."

Juxtaposition Of The Week
"I can see how this job only lasts four or five years," Kevin Pietersen told Times man Jon Westerby in Cardiff on Monday. "It's one of the toughest jobs in this country and I was told that when I took over. I'm starting to realise that. The mobile phone never stops now I'm captain, it's ridiculous."

These are dangerous sentiments for a man who once used an Oakley corporate event to complain that he never had any time off. So he can hardly have thanked the Times for accompanying the 'Worn-out Pietersen' piece with a picture of the skipper playing rugger with Gethin Jenkins and Adam Jones to promote the 2008/9 Magners League campaign.

Never a spare minute, eh, Kev?

Quote Of The Week
"I'm not interested in being involved with Mr Stanford because I do not think Mr Stanford is telling the people what he's really about. I am not going to be involved in a farce," he said. "He is telling people in the Caribbean that he wants to revive West Indian cricket but how is a week of Twenty20 cricket in Antigua going to do that?" - Michael Holding, Daily Mail.

Well whispered.

Headline Of The Week
'From Fredalo to Fred halo' - The Sun. It's not bad. It's been a quiet week.

Non-Cricket Story Of The Week
'An elephant rescued from smugglers in China has undergone a detoxification programme to cure it of heroin addiction, state media said on Thursday. The 7-year-old male Asian elephant was scheduled to return to the south-western province of Yunnan this weekend after finishing its three-year rehabilitation programme on the southern island of Hainan, the official Xinhua news agency said. The elephant, named Xiguang, became addicted after smugglers used heroin-smeared bananas to lure it and five other elephants across the border from Myanmar into Yunnan, the agency said. Wildlife experts in Hainan gave Xiguang regular injections of methadone at five times the normal human dose, it said.' - earthtimes.org. Sad as the story is, the office-bound Media Column can't help but imagine the destruction a strung-out three-tonne elephant could inflict.

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