Blessed relief for cricket fans here and Down Under -- the Barmy Army, England's inimitable band of travelling supporters, has banned its members from taking vuvuzelas on this summer's Ashes tour.

The plastic horns gained inexplicable popularity during the football World Cup in South Africa, where row upon row of spectators could be seen parping away, seemingly blissfully ignorant of the aural trauma they were causing audiences the world over.

Whether any cricket fans were actually planning to pack a vuvuzela for the Australia tour is unclear. What can be said with some certainty is that even the faintest prospect of a whole Test match's worth of low-pitched droning is too dreadful to contemplate.

As the Barmy Army co-founder Paul Burnham acutely noted: "We don't want to upset any of the other fans or annoy the authorities at any of the grounds with the constant drowning noise of the vuvuzelas."

If only this searing insight had occurred to someone involved in organising South Africa 2010!