Barmy boys just play by yob rule.

Byline: Tony Parsons

THE England cricket team is on its own - because when it comes to giving useful support, the Barmy Army are about as much good as a jockstrap with no elastic.

Barmy? They resemble a decaffeinated football crowd.

Those of us who have tried in vain to love cricket - all that stopping for tea and scones, all that scuttling for cover as soon as they get unlucky with the weather - have seen their kind elsewhere.

I was taken to football matches from the age of five, so I have been around mindlessly chanting morons all my life.

OK, at football grounds some of it is genuine support, genuine passion - you would lack a heart if the sight of the Anfield crowd singing You'll Never Walk Alone failed to stir your blood.

But much chanting at football is spiteful, stupid and attention-seeking by people who should trade in their season tickets for a life. The Barmy Army is exactly the same.

The Barmies say they just want to spice up staid, old cricket. It could certainly use old some spice. But instead, the foot soldiers of the Barmy brigades are dragging cricket down into football's sewer.

last T he witless booing of Australia's gum-chewing little captain, Ricky Ponting, just seemed like bullying and a corruption of all the qualities that I admire about cricket - sportsmanship, the Corinthian spirit and a sense of fair play which is really just human decency.

Supporters of all sports are far too sentimental about crowds. A tsunami of nastiness goes unremarked under the cover of supporting the team.

I've seen grown men bellow things inside football grounds that they would never dare whisper in the street. Because they are too gutless.

Usually, the supporters with the biggest mouths are the ones with most lacking in their lives.

That's why the sight of Ponting playing with his one-year-old daughter Emmy on the Headingley outfield was so heart-warming.

I've never seen a man so clearly having the laugh.

WITLESS BOOING OF THE AUSSIE SKIPPER ISN'T IN SPIRIT OF THE GAME