DARREN Gough must wish he'd headed for the jungle instead. Snakes, crocodiles, Janet Street-Porter, even the odious Paul Burrell must now seem far preferable to spending time in Zimbabwe.

To his credit, the Dazzler elected not to follow Phil Tufnell down the "I'm A Celebrity" route. Obviously he didn't want to end his England career on the rock bottom note he hit in the Champions Trophy final defeat by the West Indies, but at 34 he also still believes he can go on until the next World Cup.

Gough is one of several England players who had stated that they felt uncomfortable about going to Zimbabwe but decided to do so largely so that grass roots cricket would not suffer from a £1m International Cricket Council fine.

I have no doubt he would have made more money from the jungle capers, especially as the laughable lack of competition would have made him a certain winner and earned him mega-bucks in spin-offs.

So his reasons for going to Zimbabwe are perfectly laudable. The tour should obviously have been called off 18 months ago, but as it wasn't - for well-documented reasons - the players deserve credit for putting the well-being of their sport first.

As they were about to embark for Harare on Tuesday, they found themselves in an intolerable situation because amid all the dreadful dithering by politicians and administrators it seems the threat of a last-minute media ban had amazingly been overlooked.

Most of the organisations on the banned list, particularly the BBC, must have known for ages of this threat but presumably thought it would not materialise at this late stage.

In fact, it was an obvious tactic for the Mugabe regime to wait until the last minute before confirming the ban, in the hope that it would be too late to halt the tour.

It comes as absolutely no surprise that this trip should descend into such an unholy mess. It's up the world's politicians to intervene in the human rights atrocities in Zimbabwe and until they do no cricket team should be expected to stain their whites on Mugabe's turf.

THANKFULLY, there's some reasonably competitive cricket being played elsewhere. At least it seemed that way until Australia decided at 128 for four in reply to New Zealand's 353 to stop toying with their neighbours. By the time the last-wicket pair came together the total was 471 and by adding 114 Gillespie and McGrath left the Kiwis so demoralised they crumbled for 76.

This suggests a lack of bottle, but positive-thinking gurus and motivational experts have not yet come close to overcoming the absolute certainty of defeat which afflicts cricket teams subjected to such extreme changes in fortunes.

If England are at full strength and all 11 are in top form they might just make the Ashes a competitive series next summer, but first they need to raise confidence by beating South Africa in a series in which spin will be negligible.

It's something both countries need to address when the time cannot be far away that the world's top three Test wicket-takers will all be spinners. Anil Kumble's six for 131 against South Africa in Kanpur this week took his tally to 428, only six behind Kapil Dev's Indian record.

At 34, Kumble may be too far behind to catch Warne and Muralitharan, but at his current strike rate he will overhaul Courtney Walsh some time next year.

SUDDENLY people are thinking the unthinkable - that Jonny Wilkinson might not get back into the England rugby team. But coach Andy Robinson is quite right to say he'll worry about such things when Jonny is fit.

By that time Charlie Hodgson may be injured.

He's certainly not among those durable few who can withstand the frightening impact generated by the behemoths of the professional era, who seem to get bigger and stronger with every day's training.

Jonny might return for Newcastle next week. Then he has to get back to top form before the Six Nations, when I expect to see him preferred to Hodgson largely because of his ferocious tackling.

LAST Saturday morning I played golf at Barnard Castle then drove via Stanhope, Edmundbyers and Shotley Bridge to cover the Blaydon v Mowden Park rugby match. The sun shone from a cloudless, blue sky, lending a glorious golden hue to the late autumn colours as I straddled Weardale and everything seemed well with the world.

Then I arrived at Blaydon to find the match was off because of frost.

Never mind the autumn colours, and never mind the fact that the postponement had clearly been premature, at times like that you feel like kicking yourself black and blue for not having the good sense to check that the match was on.

My mood barely lifted until I heard Chelsea had surrendered a 2-0 lead at home to Bolton.