Great race, the Indian Army loved it

What a wonderful effort from the competitors in the men's road race in Delhi yesterday. Forty-two degrees, and they were riding a lazy 168 kilometres. It would have been a bit different from the conditions many in the field had faced at the world championships at Geelong last week, but the way the competitors pounded out the kms was amazing in the hair-dryer conditions.

Tactically it was fascinating stuff, too, with pre-race favourite Mark Cavendish - riding unsupported by his Manx pro team-mates, who did not make the trip - not able to engineer a crack at the leaders on the final lap, although he was full of praise for the five amateurs that did ride with him.

The Australians and the New Zealanders in particular colluded to deny him the oxygen and space of a sprint to the line, as you would expect them to do, and ultimately the Australians did a great job to get Allan Davis across the line. The tens of thousands of Indian army and police personnel for whom the event was staged were on the edge of their seats for the event: well, they would have been if they hadn't been standing.

Congratulations must also go to them for their assiduousness in keeping any spectators or ordinary Dilli-wallahs well away from any position where they might have seen or been discommoded by the cyclists going past - much less cheer them on.

North stops heading south

Congratulations to Marcus North, completing a determined century at Bangalore. It was a fine Test innings and it has helped Australia to a very strong position. North is entitled to feel very satisfied with and proud of his effort.

All good.

But hold the triumphalism, the tales of redemption, the Punter-and-the-guys-never-lost-faith-in-me quotes. What North did in Bangalore is nothing more and nothing less than his job. He is a Test batsman, and they are supposed to make runs. Not every time, sure, but often enough to earn their keep, such that the batsmens' responsibility for firstly, putting a total on the board that means the team will be difficult to beat - and secondly, pushing that total further such that the team is best-placed to win - is spread evenly across the six of them, with contributions from the keeper and the bowlers to be considered as a bonus.

What Marcus North has to do now is not consider that he has saved his Test career, and vindicated himself against criticism from all corners, but get ready to back this effort up again, and again, and again, like his captain does.

In time Mike Hussey will do this as well, although what year it is and how old he is when he does, no-one can say. Only then will what I and millions of Australian cricket fans have been pleading for - consistent contributions from numbers five and six in the Australian batting order - be a reality.

Michelangelo paints wrong ceiling

Part of the thrill of watching big-time sport is the secret joy we all take in occasionally seeing a stuff-up: the delighted realisation that they, who look so godlike as they perform their routine miracles, are actually also human, prone to almost unbelievable mistakes. Words can't express how vindicated I felt to see Tiger Woods duff a chip at Celtic Manor in the recent Ryder Cup by hitting the ground behind the ball: granted, he has more distractions these days, but to think that Tiger Woods could do that - the thing that made me quit trying to play the stupid game - is almost unbelievable.

When the best make simple mistakes, or lose concentration inexplicably, it's almost a voyeuristic thrill for the rest of us, that someone who makes an incredibly difficult feat of skill and co-ordination look ridiculously easy can also simply stuff it up. For the rest of us, our eyes almost don't take it in.

While Western Australian Michelangelo Giustiniano is not as well-known as Tiger Woods, he is as much an expert with a pistol as Tiger is with the irons, and has won Commonwealth Games gold medals. He is also 57 years old, and a very experienced, nerveless shooter - until the weekend.

Under mounting pressure in a four-way tie for second at the completion of the 600-shot final - meaning a looming shoot-off to decide the silver and bronze medals - and running low on ammunition, Giustiniano warmed up with five blanks, and then pumped five ‘live' shots into the target. But it was the wrong one: it was the target of the Singaporean next to him. His own target had not a mark on it. Everyone watching thought there had been a scoring error, but to his credit, Giustiniano said that the only system that had failed was "the one between my ears."

Seb sizzles at sodden Suzuka

Australia's Mark Webber does not have to look very far to see his main rival for the Formula One world championship: it's his Red Bull "team-mate" Sebastian Vettel, who got to spray the Mumm after taking out the Japanese Grand prix yesterday, ahead of Webber and Ferrari's Fernando Alonso. The McLarens of Jenson Button and Lewis Hamilton ran fourth and fifth, leaving Webber 14 points ahead of Alonso and Vettel. The McLarens now stand fourth (Hamilton) and fifth (Button) and would need virtually everything to go right in the final three Grands Prix to challenge for the title.

The Red Bulls' Renault powerplant is consistently faster than the Ferraris', and the title appears to be Red Bull's to lose, heading to Korea. Webber knows that "Randy Mandy" - as Vettel intriguingly calls his car - is his real threat, and if the German can keep him in the rear-vision mirror all day as he did at Suzuka, he will win the title. The politics of the Red Bull garage must be seething at the moment like Medicean Florence.

In other developments to come out of a sodden Suzuka at the weekend, the all-action Sunday that resulted from having to run the qualifying session on the same day made for a tremendous day's racing. F1 could be on to a winner with that, although there's no way the FIA would give up a day's ticket sales and TV coverage, more's the pity. Having qualifying on the same day gave the action an urgency that improved it ten-fold as a spectacle.