ENGLAND'S stirring victories over the cricketing giants of the Netherlands and Namibia this week were sadly eclipsed by the earth-shattering news that footballer David Beckham had sustained a minor scrape over his eye, poor thing.

We're on the verge of war but Alex Ferguson going ballistic is front page news. Amazing... but if the Manchester United manager had weapons of mass destruction secreted within his dressing room, even Saddam Hussein would be worried.

Yet cricket is one of the reasons that President George Bush is President Bush. John Adams was one of the founding fathers of the United States, the second president after George Washington and, because of his English background, a great cricket fan. After signing the Declaration of Independence in 1776, Adams and the other fathers were reputedly debating what the new head of state should be called. "If president is good enough for the leader of a cricket club," said Adams, "it is good enough for the leader of the United States."

And so, apocryphally, we have President Bush.

Cricket, of course, went to America with the 18th century English settlers, and watching the game's spread around the world is like watching the evolution of an empire.

The game came to Canada in 1759. British soldiers beat the French at the Battle of the Plains of Abraham above Quebec. In 1867, the Canadians declared cricket to be their national game and in 1872, Ross McKenzie of Toronto hurled a cricket ball 140 yards and nine inches. That was a world record, until April 1882 when Robert Percival of Shildon lobbed one 140 yards and two feet at the Sands racecourse in Durham City.

And so cricket spread around the world. It was first played in Argentina because a Royal Marine, Major Alexander Gillespie, was taken prisoner in 1806 while trying to capture Buenos Aires. To while away his time behind bars, he taught the locals the intricacies of the googly.

It is played in Spain and Portugal because English soldiers introduced it while they were there fighting the Peninsular War in 1809; it is played in Belgium because shortly before the Battle of Waterloo in 1815, Wellington's men set up a wicket and entranced the natives.

The Dutch saw it being played in Cape Town, South Africa, in 1859 and took it back home to Holland - which is why last weekend England were able to beat the Netherlands.

It reached Rhodesia in 1890 when British troops headed northwards out of South Africa. Under the guidance of Monty Bowden, a former England captain, they played the first game there on August 16, 1890 - it wasn't until September 12 that year that they got round to founding the first town. They called the town Fort Salisbury; Robert Mugabe calls it Harare; and Nasser Hussein's men probably wish Bowden hadn't bothered.

There was another wave of cricket imperialism after the end of the Second World War. British soldiers occupying Austria introduced it there and the Israelis have been playing it for over 50 years.

And maybe, just maybe, they'll be a third wave: when our brave boys have liberated Baghdad, they'll set up stumps in the desert and Iraq will fall under the gentlemanly spell of gentle away swing.