IT is being trumpeted as the next big dance craze.

Properly perfected, it can grab headlines and TV coverage and whip up 250,000 internet hits in a flash.

Never being one to knowingly ignore a trend, I thought I’d devote some of this week’s column to a short dance lesson, getting all of you up to speed with what the bookies reckon could be a real winner.

I suggest your first steps are taken in the privacy of your own home, quite possibly with the curtains drawn. A full length mirror is an additional extra for the really confident dancers among you.

So are you ready?

Step one: Stand comfortably, feet slightly apart. Put your left hand behind your head and your right hand down by your side. OK so far?

Step two: Stick your right arm out to the side and here’s the technical tip – a front facing palm makes you look like a professional.

Step three: Concentrate as you push that right arm forward but just a few inches mind. No flashy big gestures please.

Step four: Now here’s the tricky bit. Sweep that right arm across the body and let the jaw drop if so desired.

Step five: Control those muscles as you bring the right arm back across the body to its initial position. Raised eyebrows are not uncommon at this point.

Step six: Don’t be disappointed if this next move is a step too far for you. It is, after all, a manoeuvre for the more advanced performer. But here goes. Raise your left knee.

Finally, just a word of advice for dance captains. It may be a sensible precaution to ensure that the dressing-room warm-up before any performance includes a quick check on ensuring that all the team know their right from their left.

And now you are ready to go, to dance The Sprinkler, the new style celebration supposedly reproducing the action of a garden sprinkler (!) that has been credited with giving the England cricket team, yes, cricket team, the confidence to look victory in the face and smile back.

Now I’m not one of those who yearn for the handshake and well done chaps era.

Sport these days is, after all, about entertainment but you wouldn’t always know it.

It is one of my grouses that if you take the fun out of playing sport, it shows on the pitch, park, cricket field, whatever.

Show me a sportsman or woman who loves what they are doing and isn’t restrained by the pressures of any number of things from being played out of position, having their flair crushed by the team ethos of numbingly boring tactics or dressing room politics and you may find it’s a win, win situation.

Just as an aside, look how well Sale played rugby on Sunday after a bit of a dip in form to put it politely.

The club was having a rough ride off the pitch and it showed in the results.

Current man in charge Pete Anglesea has just helped his squad end a six-match losing streak with a spectacular brushing aside of Saracens.

Those off-pitch problems were distracting his squad he reckons but it looks like sensible Mr Anglesea has got his players’ focus back where it should be, on the pitch.

Seems common sense that when players start to enjoy their sport again, morale and effort soar and success doesn’t just mean grinding out draws but finding a winning seam again. And the public love it.

Cricket’s new love, the Sprinkler, is said to have been adopted by the England cricket team as it prepared for the Ashes tour in Australia. A wind-down or up, whichever way you want to look at it.

Sadly, rumour has it that it was invented in the 1980s by Aussies as they got down to some serious work on another of their art works, the barbecue.

One England player, probably suffering from too much excitement, likened the Sprinkler to the revered Haka seen to such dramatic effect on the rugby pitch.

For me, that sounds like a touch too long spent in the Australian sun.

The Haka is rightly respected for its dignity and for its roots in the Maori culture.

And that’s where I draw the line.

Sport and fun, absolutely. I even thought Icelandic footballers fishing for votes in the celebration dance play-offs was definitely Catch of the Day.

But the Sprinkler as culture? Get a grip lads.