When Britain sneezes, it's time to panic

It’s swine flu season and the Australian team has asked one of the touring journalists to stay away from them for three days after a suspected case of the disease. There are many moments when the players would like to insist on a reporter being in quarantine (on one occasion in Worcester a reporter was uninvited from a press conference), but unfortunately for them it takes a pandemic to shut down some of the questions.

I don’t have it yet, but I think the guy in the pin-striped suit who sneezed on me this morning did. All over my paper. Britain seems to be the swine flu capital of the world at the moment and everyone seems to be sizing up each other’s health on the trains and buses. Life in the parks is much cleaner. There it’s the runners that make me feel sick.

Finding time to do any exercise other than walking up stairs or to the tube is kind of hard on tour, but in Kensington Gardens people pound their own tracks in the grass, passing Princess Diana’s former residence, or breezing past on bikes, pretending they are across the Channel in the Tour de France. Over there Cadel Evans is doing as well as the Australian cricket team did at Lord’s.

Evans, who is backing up after two second places in the race, is going downhill faster than Mitchell Johnson on the Lord’s slope. He started well before losing his rhythm and form while the Australians were at Lord’s. Unlike his countrymen, he is no longer in contention for one of sport’s greatest prizes.