I still remember my mate Jordan finishing an English essay with the phrase, "It's as boring as cricket". In red pen, Mr Trickett wrote "Blasphemy!" and marked him down accordingly.

Jordan was the kind of guy who'd quietly say something funny to me in class. I'd repeat it loudly, get a big laugh from his joke and he'd seethe with rage.

He was a real seminal influence on my love of plagiarism, and he also opened my eyes to the reality of a sport that basically involves swatting a plank of willow at a sphere so it doesn't bruise your leg or knock over some twigs, while a bunch of guys stand round getting heatstroke for 1-5 days.

Since everyone around me at work or socially loves cricket to such an extreme extent that they'll not only check scores online as they update through the workday or - brace yourselves - actually play the game itself, I'm often forced to pretend a knowledge and interest.

My only connection to hard, red balls is that I went to uni with Ricky Ponting's missus, so it's a tough job.

Awesome - that last sentence is kinda suggestive, but doesn't actually mean anything.

Not knowing anything about cricket was harder when The 12th Man was in his heyday. After the first album, it was all he talked about. My blond, tanned, zinc-lipped mates would be cracking up at gags about pigeon-fancying and sticking car keys in the pitch, so I'd chuckle along too, impatiently waiting for Billy Birmingham to say "fuck" in Richie Benaud's voice. That humour is universal - and we can all enjoy it again with his upcoming album Boned!

Honestly though, cricket is so ingrained in our culture that it's difficult not to pick up a clue here and there. From Sherbert's Howzat to Weet-Bix boxes to award-winning short film Dream Date, it seems the game's everywhere.

The other day, the Daily Telegraph had two stories on the front page. The first, which got the bottom third of the cover was a story about some little boy who'd been brutally murdered or something. I can't recall, because the rest of the page was taken up with the headline "WIDE THEY BOTHER?" and a massive image of England's first bowl of the Test series...a wide. They even had a little UK-flag-themed arrow pointing to the ball, in case you missed it.

And fuck me, did we need round-the-clock photography of various Aussie players cradling that little urn they do battle for? Fair enough, there's a story and history behind the Ashes, which is more exciting than some corporate-sponsored trophy, but is there anyone in the nation who hasn't heard the phrase "the death of English cricket" more than five times in the last month?

You can tell Channel Nine struggles with the telecast. Even though all of Australia seems to be tuning in, they keep trying to jazz it up with cameras in the batsman's pants to see how tight his arsehole gets as a Brett Lee-launched red streak heads his way and futuristic sound effects added to freeze-frame footage of each ball to show how it would've bounced had it been bowled on a sticky wicket, Mars or the fiery surface of the Sun.

I don't think I can take much more of the saturated media coverage of the Ashes. It's as boring as cricket.