Not since the Harlem Globetrotters last beat the Washington Generals has a foregone sporting conclusion been so rapturously and emotionally received by a sell-out crowd.

All over by lunchtime. Australia 5, England 0. Warne 708, McGrath 563, Langer 7698, Buchanan 68-11-10. Lots to reflect upon and digest, but that will have to wait for this evening.

"You got an MBE, right? For scoring seven at the Oval? It's an embarrassment."

- Dr Shane Warne to Paul Collingwood MBE, Sydney Cricket Ground, 4.1.07.

Now we all know that the credibility of the British honours scheme is in tatters, but the decision to hand out gongs to the 2005 Ashes team a year ago was really a bit silly, something that I wrote about at the time.

You have to hand it to the Murdoch comic books. One week they are celebrating - in advance - the Lord Of The RingsText Alert's 700th wicket, the next week they are celebrating his 1000th wicket. With that rarest or rarities, the full page colour liftout commemorative poster.

So what are we celebrating again? Shane Warne's 1000th international wicket. As in all "full internationals". Let me explain, by introducing the rickeyre.com vegetable index (More about the fruit index later)

Was this just another Pommy sledge, or a pagan ritual aimed at raising Sir Neville Cardus from the dead?

12.30am in Sydney, ten hours before the scheduled start of the Warne-McGrath-Langer-Buchanan grand finale. It has been raining fairly steadily for the last three or four hours here, about six kilometres west of the SCG.

Having said that, the forecast from the Bureau of Meteorology indicates that the showers will be restricted to morning and night.

The International Year of the Dolphin begins on a poignant note. Last month, the Yangtze Freshwater Dolphin - the baiji (Lipotes vexillifer) - was declared to be almost certainly extinct.

A victim of the long-term poisoning of the Yangtze River.

The baiji is the first species of cetacean to have become extinct in modern times, and it's the first large mammal to disappear as the direct result of man's pillage of the Earth's natural resources.

There's something I can't comprehend. Why do the good people of Sydney insist on all those carbon emissions into the atmosphere to mark the New Year?

Anyway, have a good one. It is now the Year of the Dolphin.

A new Net Sessions is on its way for the new year! I'm working on a review of the cricket year 2006.

If you want to have your say as part of the podcast, drop me a voicemail on Skype or Googletalk to rickeyre, or email me through my contact Rick page, or simply drop a comment on the end of this message.

I've only given 24 hours notice for these, my apologies, but if there is sufficient response I'll put together a follow-up podcast later on.

Saddam Hussein was killed today. He was put to death by hanging at the direction of the Iraqi Government following a trial for one of his lesser alleged crimes against humanity. His death means that other, even more serious, charges against him will never be brought to account - notably the use of chemical weapons against Kurds in 1988. Likewise, the complicity of governments friendly to Iraq prior to the 1990 invasion of Kuwait will be more difficult to explore.

I can never understand how, if the taking of human life is such a heinous crime, the punishment can be the taking of human life. I have no sympathy for Saddam Hussein over his actions across the past forty years. But he should have been locked away for the term of his natural life.