No doubt if any moves to change the balls were made yet again it would have the traditionalists up in arms in an instant.

I can imagine that great Australian skipper Allan Border and that equally dyed-in-the-wool defender of the faith Geoff Boycott would both vent strong opinions.

And there can be little doubting their argument would run along the lines that if Shahid Afridi’s mum would just send him out with a decent breakfast inside him on the morning of the game he wouldn’t have to resort to eating the ball!

AT LAST there has been an outbreak of commonsense as rugby union’s Six Nations contest kicks off this weekend.

England will be wearing a one-off retro-style playing shirt specially-designed to celebrate the RFU’s Centenary Year in 2010 when they take on the Welsh at Twickenham tomorrow.

And the good news for fans of both codes is that it looks like a rugby shirt!

It is the first time in a long while that a top team will be sporting a jersey that doesn’t look like it is a second from some kind of rubber fetish shop.

The tight fitting top is a blight that began back at the start of the last decade when Blackburn Rovers decided to employ Italian kit firm Kappa to design a sleek figure-hugging kit and then wondered why sales of replica shirts were down.

Given that the staple diet of said East Lancashire town is beer and pies, apparently even the extra large version could not cope with the fine physiques of the majority of the Ewood Park faithful.

Both rugby codes were quick to follow with skin-tight shirts that arguably made the players on the pitch harder to tackle – but made it infinitely more difficult for their fans to get dressed in their club colours within half a day of kick-off time.

So any move to a retro shirt that is a little more roomy is a positive step and could lead to doctors having to deal with far fewer cases of frost-bitten belly buttons.