Stop. Please. We beg you. Enough's enough.

One more 'Save Simon Katich' story in the media and we might just scream. And keep on screaming till we pop.

The endless and tedious campaign to have Katich reinstated to the Australian Test squad - a campaign run largely through the sports pages of The Australian and Sydney's Daily Telegraph, but kept chugging along by regular outbursts from the man himself - has worn out our patience and exhausted any goodwill we might have felt towards the stubble-chinned leftie.

From the moment Katich was surprisingly overlooked for a Test contract in early June, we've been subject to this crusade. There has been haranguing of selectors, notably Andrew Hilditch; the ritual reciting of Katich's record; potshot after potshot at Cricket Australia; the selective talking up of Katich's career record to such an extent you might have thought it was Neil Harvey or Garfield Sobers being discussed; even the dragging of peripheral players such as Indian seamer Zaheer Khan into the debate.

And this campaign has been waged by the normally-sensible pair of Peter Lalor and Malcolm Conn, two News Ltd cricket writers who lead the way among their peers in the matter of news-breaking and incisive analysis.

But on the topic of Katich's sacking, they've developed a blind spot. In fact, not so much a blind spot as a total eclipse of any commonsense and journalistic detachment.

Why the vitriol, why the bile, why the sense of personal affront? If you didn't know better, you'd think these guys were all mates who got out on the squirt together and sang the Richmond footy club theme song.

The steaming pile of nonsense from The Oz today, under the headline Fans Revive Katich's Vital Signs, was the final straw: ''The people who bore the Katich signs at yesterday's one-dayer between NSW and Victoria (Ed's note: there were at least four people in an accompanying photograph holding up We Love Kat signs) are part of a wide group of cricket fans who are astounded, if not angered, that the prolific batsman has lost his spot.''

Well, where to start? I guess that depends which group of people you mix with. Down here south of the Murray, the talk's been about the Qantas strike, the Melbourne Cup, Collingwood's grand final flop and maybe even the new-look Shane Warne. But Simon Katich? Nup, nary a mention. Given he was given his marching orders about 150 days ago, that's probably not surprising.

It couldn't be that the popular uprising from that 'wide group of angry cricket fans' is confined to three dozen of Kato's nearest and dearest in Sydney, could it?

Cricket history is littered with the hard done-by. Dean Jones, Brad Hodge, Phil Jaques, Chris Rogers are four names that come to mind but there have been many others besides who've had their Test careers cut short in questionable or unlucky circumstances. Some, such as Jamie Siddons, never even got the chance to be dropped.

We keep hearing that, since his reinstatement to the Test team in 2008, Katich had scored more runs than anyone except England's prolific left-handed opener Alastair Cook.

But it doesn't tell the whole story. You could also say Katich had made no score above 50 in his last 10 Test innings and that his average in his past three Test series had been 32. His Test average over the past three series was running well below his overall mark of 45.

So you could say - as the selectors have done - that his career is on the wane. And, at 35 (as he was in June) that's not so unusual. Katich's defenders - and the man himself - have pointed to Sachin Tendulkar's renaissance as a 38-year-old. Well, everyone admires Katich's gritty qualities as an opener but it's probably best we leave that comparison right there, for Simon - whichever way you cut and dice it - aint no Sachin.

If Katich were to play for Australia in a Test match tomorrow, the top order would include Shane Watson (30 years old), Katich (36), Michael Clarke (30), Ricky Ponting (37) and Michael Hussey (36), with Brad Haddin (34) coming in after that lot. How top-heavy with wrinklies can one Australian side be?

Still, we're all for opinions here at BPL and passionately held ones at that.

But, show's over now, boys. Nothing to see here. Time to move on. Kato's been shown the raised index finger for the last time in his Test career and best everyone get their heads around that.