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It's called the ultimate challenge in world cricket. Not the ultimate fighting challenge, but the ultimate challenge nonetheless. Australia playing England in a five-game series of cricket matches that last a maximum of five days each. The trophy, a fragile and minute 125 year-old artifact - The Ashes - securely and permanently stored and displayed in London.

A giant of 20th century mathematics died on Friday, Benoît Mandelbrot, the man who gave prominence to the theory of fractal geometry.

(This item is my contribution to Blog Action Day 2010, whose topic this year is "Water".)

Australia is being confronted with a national dilemma which has a major impact on its society and the environment, and it will take a huge amount of wisdom, courage, co-operation and, yes, pain to reach a stable outcome.

Kenya's upset of the West Indies. Ireland's giant-killing of Pakistan. Moments in the sun for Canada, Bermuda, the Netherlands and others. Sri Lanka's rise from minnows to champions. Even Afghanistan's near-miss at joining the club. All these things could be consigned to the trashcan of history with the ICC approving a recommendation to downsize the Cricket World Cup.

Does the sporting world really need a Commonwealth Games every four years? Is it worth the trouble, the cost, the sporting overkill, the anachronistic vestages of empire? You can probably tell which way I'm leading these questions.

Pakistan's tour of England is set to stagger across the line to complete everyone's contractual obligations this week. Though it is, inside a further realm of contractual fantasy, actually England's tour of Pakistan being staged in England.

The tour has been damaged by allegations of spot-fixing in the form of deliberate front-foot no-balls intended to defraud bookmakers engaging in the astonishingly greedy practice of spot-betting. For the first time ever, the ICC's Anti-Corruption Unit has laid charges against a number of Pakistani international players.

As we pay tribute this weekend on the 40th anniversary of the death of Jimi Hendrix, I've embedded a video of probably his most famous live performance, from Woodstock, NY in 1969, his rendition of John Stafford Smith's 1778 composition "To Anacreon In Heaven".

You may know it better as that song about Bombs Bursting In Air. I blogged more about its history on the occasion of May Day 2006, but for now, take it away Jimi:

September 18, 1970: The sudden, tragic death at the age of 27 in London of an absolute musical genius, Jimi Hendrix.

It's taken over a year for us to know this, but The Oval Test of the 2009 Ashes was Andrew Flintoff's last game of competitive cricket. The losing battle with injury was finally conceded on the last day of a, for him, empty 2010 English season.