AS the media is perceived to become ever more intrusive, sports stars, like politicians, react by becoming increasingly economical with the truth.

They wouldn't like it if we accused them of being liars, but they apparently see nothing wrong in trying to pull the wool over our eyes. Unfortunately for them, some of us weren't born yesterday.

I don't buy Marcus Trescothick's claim that a virus forced him home from India any more than I fall for Steve McClaren's assertion that he is totally focused on winning sliverware for Middlesbrough.

Mystery has surrounded Trescothick's departure, in tears, in mid-match with coach Duncan Fletcher stating that the vice-captain was going home for personal reasons. It would have been better to maintain that stance and insist that the personal reasons were no-one else's business than introduce a virus which wasn't mentioned by England's medical staff at the time.

McClaren is less blameworthy as in the murky world of football it is perfectly laudable to want to be seen to be concentrating on the job in hand. Perhaps he was under orders to reveal nothing about his interview for the England job, but it must be a distraction at a time when Middlesbrough face the biggest three weeks in the club's history.

Propelling Boro to the semi-finals of the FA and UEFA Cups has doubtless boosted McClaren's England credentials since the day they hit rock bottom by losing 4-0 at home to Aston Villa, and I just wish he felt able to talk openly about what is a very interesting clash between club and country.

ANOTHER smokescreen erected this week is the one surrounding Wayne Rooney's reported £700,000 gambling debts and the resultant fall-out with Michael Owen. But the truth of this matter doesn't interest me as I find it just another boring example of the corrupting influence of top-flight football, in which there are no longer any surprises.

Rooney's debt amounts to about 12 weeks' pay and as his ridiculous five-volume autobiography deal is set to net him £5m he is not going to have any sleepless nights. Nor should we worry about him falling out with Owen as great performers don't need to be bosom buddies. Playing alongside Craig Bellamy didn't seem to do Alan Shearer any harm.

Shearer didn't much care for Bellamy by all accounts, and why would he? It amazes me that, on the strength of his recent goals for Blackburn, some journalists now seek to chide Newcastle for letting Bellamy go.

Sir Bobby Robson had undermined his own position by assembling such a bag of ferrets in the mistaken belief that his old-fashioned ways could control them. We all mellow with age, and perhaps Bellamy and Lee Bowyer have settled down a little, but it beats me why Bowyer has been allowed to stay.

THE sporting world is full of Clark(e)s at the moment. There are two in the Australian cricket team which staged its predictable comeback in the face of embarrassment against Bangladesh, and two featured prominently in the US Masters.

South Africa's Tim Clark proved the value of a stroke of luck by holing a bunker shot at the last to finish second, while Darren Clarke again showed he can't stay the distance. He began by saying his wife's illness had made him appreciate that winning wasn't important - an attitude which was supposed to be helping him. But it made no difference on the final day as he disappeared off the radar.

He wasn't alone on a day when the putts just wouldn't drop for Freddie Couples, the otherwise sensational Tiger Woods and several others, depriving us of the Masters' usual thrilling finish.

Phil Mickelson's second green jacket, following that of Mike Weir in 2003, means left-handers have won three of the last four Masters after a 40-year wait for a cack-handed major winner since Bob Charles triumphed in the 1963 Open. All that stuff about left-handers' hand-eye co-ordination being better suited to striking a moving ball must have been poppycock after all.

THE arrival of Wisden coincided with several inches of snow falling in Kent, where Durham open their season next Wednesday. Hopefully there will be more evidence of global warming by the time of the Twenty20 Cup, about which Wisden commissioned 81-year-old writer, broadcaster and former MP Clement Freud to write a piece.

I remember Freud sitting alone in a deckchair on the boundary during Riverside's inaugural match, a second X1 contest in 1994, which was a rather more relaxing occasion than any Twenty20 bash. He concludes his Wisden article by saying: "Where have you been?" asked my wife when I came home just after 9pm. I told her I'd been watching cricket and listening to music. She said: "Don't be silly."

THERE is to be a study into whether or not angling is cruel. But didn't I read a couple of weeks ago that a rather large grant is to be made available to encourage children from ethnic minorities to go fishing? While this looks like a clear case of the loony left applying discrimination in reverse, it also strikes me that you can't have your bait and eat it.

Published: 14/04/2006