A ball with no name

Fantasy Bob notes with barely disguised apathy that the public is to be invited to suggest a name for the football to be used during the 2012 Olympic football tournament.  He will pass over the obvious concern that the games are so cash strapped that they can afford only one ball for a 3 week tournament.  More significantly, it has never been obvious to FB that balls are things that require names, other than golf balls which are obviously deserving of the fruity names given to them as they regularly exhibit a mind of their own by diving headlong deep into the nearest gorse bush.  But that is another story.

Fantasy Bob warns against building false expectations in this venture.  He has only just got over the emotional trauma associated with a similar populist gesture many years ago when the presenters of BBC's prime children's TV show Blue Peter invited its audience of enthralled children and hungover sociology students to name their newly acquired dog, a golden labrador (if FB recalls correctly).  Now this could have demonstrated the collective imagination of the coming generation - and FB thought his own suggestion of Brunhilde was bound to win.  FB was devastated by crippling mundaneness of the eventual choice - Honey.  Proof if ever was needed of the decline of the British capacity for world leadership and an early sign that this generation would be too easily placated by the mediocrity of the X Factor.

Which side to shine?

FB is therefore glad that the organisers of the Cricket World Cup have eschewed such nonsense.  The balls in this competition have a pleasingly superior air of anonymity about them.  But they are unlikely to be replicas of the Diamond cricket ball was made in Sri Lanka in November 2004. It weighs 53.83 carats and has pure gold seam of 125 grams.   FB can find no reports of how much this object might be worth, nor of whether it reverse swings.

But what of a name for the Olympic football?  FB suggests Janet.