Third Test, final day: Time through the hourglass

Today, Dominic Cork announced that he'll be one of the contestants on Dancing On Ice, confirmation that this endlessly competitive, estimable cricketer has crept onto the celeb Z-list. Yes, it'll be funny to see him expressing his hitherto well-concealed aesthetic bent, but hell, ain't it sad, too? They all go so quickly, those days on the field - as Buk once put it, 'they run away like wild horses over the hills'.

The newly-connected Twittering world draws the lines even more clearly now: there's Goughy flying home from doing his laddish radio bits in Perth, MPV joshing with his golf partners, Tresco sitting, suited and booted, at the Sports Personality of the Year awards, and many more of them, newly embarked on their long afterlives.

This Ashes series feels concertina-d; three-fifths gone already and it's barely started, the other two matches back to back. It's over so quickly in a way it never used to be, played in a rush so that they can shoehorn in lots of one-dayers before another world cup and then another full summer, another winter, all strung together in such a way that the rhythm of the game feels disrupted. Such acceleration saps the joy for everyone. Even the players are wishing away their days.

It doesn't always do to be winsome, but the great series in cricket have a feel of semi-permanence to them, or at least they should have. Even the Ashes of 2005 unfolded, and they were nothing compared to the summer-long duels of the 1980s and 1990s, where the Tests would stop for county and state fixtures, and the one-day series were fitted in halfway through.

It comes and it goes quickly, this stuff, and it needs to be held and savoured for a while because before you know it, you're Corky, sat backstage in a dreadful TV studio, pulling on a lycra jumpsuit and hoping that the public still dig you.