Welcome to Part 2 of the Official Confectionery Stall Multiple Choice 2009 Ashes Quiz. Following last week’s four questions about the Lord’s Test, this week’s exam focuses more on the Edgbaston Test, which, if predictions about the weather and pitch prove true, is already shaping up to be one of the most exciting matches ever played in the Birmingham area which straddles July and August 2009.

Pencils at the ready...

5. Who is going to win at Edgbaston?

(a) England

They’ve already broken one hoodoo – not having beaten Australia at Lord’s since Greta Garbo was still a proactive conversationalist.

In the oldest of all cricketing proverbs: One Brings Two. They will surely now break another hoodoo – not having beaten Australia in the next Test match after beating Australia at Lord’s since 1890. It will help if the team can follow the example of the majority of the English media, and forget how they only managed to escape from the jaws of defeat in Cardiff by first coating themselves in mayonnaise and climbing into those jaws.

(b) Australia

Mitchell Johnson has set himself up perfectly for a startling return to form, catapulting England out on a docile pitch before slugging a match-winning century. Australia’s batsmen are averaging almost 10 runs an innings more than England’s in the series so far, and, as Michael Clarke himself said, his team is never more dangerous than when the chips are down. Recent history suggests this is almost as big a lie as his claim that this Australian team is as good as any he has played in, but you have to admire the lad for saying it anyway.

(c) No-one – it will be a draw

Rain is forecast, the pitch is reportedly flat as a demotivated pancake, and, more pertinently, both sides should have learned from their mistakes of the first two Tests, each of which were played on friendly batting surfaces, and each of which required batting of catastrophic ineptitude to lead make a positive result possible.

Even so, the runs-per-wicket for both sides put together (43) is so far the highest ever in an Ashes series. It will take something special for either side to force a defeat out of themselves.

Furthermore, in the West Indies, England proved masters at accidentally playing for the draw when they need to play for the win. They should therefore have no trouble playing for the draw when they actually need to play for the draw. Three stalemates would be enough to match the glorious 1926 and 1953 one-nil-out-of-five triumphs.

(d) No-one – it will be a tie

There has never been an Ashes tie. The last Edgbaston Test was the closest the two teams have ever come. There have been 321 Tests between these nations. Statistically, with only four results possible, around 80 of those should have been ties. It is long overdue.

6. All cricket fans will be hoping that Edgbaston is not scarred by further umpiring controversies of the sort seen and giggled/whinged about (delete according to hemisphere of origin) at Lord’s. What is the long-term solution to disputes such as the Hughes-Strauss-Koertzen-Ponting-Ball-Grass-Referral Incident?

(a) End all arguments by removing caught from the list of dismissals.

This will also encourage more exciting, aggressive bowling. Fast bowlers would be forced to bowl yorkers in an attempt to dismiss batsmen bowled or lbw, and bouncers in an effort to make batsmen retire hurt. In this age of breakneck modernisation, it could also herald a return to underarm daisy-cutters − cricket re-embracing its roots.

(b) Take the fielder’s word for it – we’re all adults, and it’s only a game.

The batting team must, however, be entitled to demand an instant on-field polygraph test to ensure the catcher is telling the truth. If it transpires that he has fibbed, he should be paraded around the boundary, booed and pelted with biscuits shaped like Colin Cowdrey.

(c) Alternating decisions – one out, the next one not out.

This new system was trialled at Lord’s – refer one, don’t refer the next. Statistics say that such a system will even out over the course of a series, or, at least, over the course of the rest of cricket history.

(d) Dye the entire outfield with a bright purple pigment.

This is a simple, error-proof solution to demonstrate conclusively whether or not a ball has bounced before thudding into a fielder’s hands. Only the 22-yards between the stumps would be left unpurpled. The ball would be thoroughly cleaned by the umpire before each delivery. After a disputed catch, the umpire would inspect the ball. If the purple pigment is visible on the ball, the ball would have been shown to have bounced, the catch would be duly disallowed, and the umpire would tut at the fielder concerned and start muttering about how the entire planet has lost the plot.

The pigment would have to be re-applied to the outfield between each over, to ensure a fair and even covering at all times. Batsmen would not be allowed to coat their bats in the purple pigment.

Traditionalists will of course bleat about how cricket has always been played on a green surface, players will complain about getting purple all over their clothes and faces, and groundsmen will whinge about the added workload and potential toxicity of a substance that may have to be radioactive in order both to be sufficiently purple and not to cause interference on TV pictures.

Surely, however, reaching a fair decision is more important than any of these minor quibbles, in this day and age?

7. Last week, I promised to ask the question: How much will England miss Kevin Pietersen? On reflection, this can now be more productively phrased: Which of the following true statistics about Ian Bell is the most misleading?

(a) Ian Bell averages 25 against Australia

The widely-accepted idea that Ian Bell has ‘never really done it against Australia’ is true in the sense that he has never really done it against Australia, but false in the sense that the statistics point unerringly to him doing it in no uncertain terms this time.

Whilst only a mathematical Luddite could dispute that Bell averages 25 in his 10 Ashes Tests, and has been out in single figures 11 times in his 20 innings, it should also be remembered that he averaged 17.1 in 2005, but a much more respectable if scarcely abacus-shattering 33.1 in 2006-7.

This represents a 93% series-to-series improvement. If the Warwickshire Whirlwind continues to ski the right way up this graph, he will average 64 this year, 124 in 2010-11, and 240 in 2013, by when he will be universally recognised as the greatest player of all time.

It should also be remembered that Bradman scored six ducks against England, so he wasn’t all good either. And, in the 2006-07 series, Bell scored more runs than Strauss, Cook, Flintoff, Panesar, Prior, Bopara, Botham, Barrington, Compton, Hutton, Hammond or Hobbs. Or Gilchrist or Langer.

(b) Ian Bell averages over 40 in Test cricket

This puts him above, among others, England stalwarts such as Stewart, Atherton, Hussain, Lamb, Gatting, Greig (both Tony and Ian), Fletcher, Woolley and even Hutton (Richard, admittedly, not Len). He averages 48 in the first innings when games are shaped, averages 47 batting at No. 4, 74 with Strauss as captain, 45 in England, and 43 in third Tests (although he’d better perform at Edgbaston – he averages 18.5 in the fourth and fifth Tests of series). And he averages 297 when Kevin Pietersen is not in the team.

Against this, he has mostly played on nice and friendly pitches, it’s a batsman’s game these days, averages mean less and less in modern Test cricket, he filled his boots against Bangladesh at the start of his career (see Pietersen-absent stat above), filled them again against a fairly weak Pakistan attack in 2006, since when he has scored three centuries in three years. And you can dress a statistic us as smartly as you like, but it doesn’t guarantee that it will be dancing cheek-to-cheek with truth at the end of the evening.

In summary, Ian Bell could have done better, Ian Bell could have done worse. Bearing in mind the class of his best innings and finest strokes, however, the overall feeling is that Ian Bell’s career has so far been like a fillet of prime sirloin made into an adequate stroganoff. Neither inedible, nor incredible.

(c) Ian Bell averages 1.3 catches per match in Ashes Tests

This compares domineeringly against Kevin Pietersen’s figure of 0.3. So he is effectively worth one extra innings per Test. Which means that Bell’s batting average of 33 is in effect almost identical to Pietersen’s 50.

8. Which part of their game will Australia have to improve most to avoid repeating their disappointing performance at Lord’s?

a) Bowling.

b) Batting.

c) Rudi Koertzen.

And, finally, as a tie-breaker in case the scores are level:

9. Will there ever be another Test pitch with genuine pace and bounce in it?

a) No.

b) Probably not.

The deadline for completion of the quiz in order to win the chance to captain your country in a Test match is 1st January 2019. Answers to follow at some point before then.

	Bryce McGain struggles with question 2 © Getty Images

As promised, here is Paper 1 of the Official Confectionery Stall Multiple Choice 2009 Ashes Quiz/Exam. Answer the following four questions to the very best of your ability. No cheating. Read your answers aloud to your computer or a trusted household pet, then wait and see what happens.

All those scoring above the Test batting average of their favourite player are entitled to draw themselves a certificate, and scribble their names onto a Test scorecard from an appropriate edition of Wisden.

QUESTION 1:
Where does the Lord’s victory rank amongst the great achievements in British history?

(a) Not very high. It’s only a game. And Australia were, for the most part, garbage. When a solid but habitually unspectacular opening partnership such as Cook and Strauss put on 196 in 40-odd overs without having to think about taking even half a risk, you know you’ve bowled like a skip full of rotting potatoes.

(b) Quite high. Below Shakespeare’s plays, but above Buck’s Fizz winning the Eurovision Song Contest in 1981. One of the great monkeys has been removed from the national sporting back, but that will be forgotten if England allow the monkey to then climb up a tree and urinate on their picnic by failing to win the Ashes.

(c) Top of the list. Bar none. The Cardiff-Lord’s double was the finest escape-followed-by-victory combination since the Dunkerque-Battle-of-Britain one-two in 1940. However, bearing in mind that Britain had prevailed in a world war just over 20 years previously, the Lord’s win has even greater rarity value.

QUESTION 2: Why did Australia play so astonishingly badly for large and decisive parts of the game?

(a) Because they are a largely inexperienced team, and therefore prone to inconsistency, with some key players out of form. We don’t yet know how good they are. Their impressive series win in South Africa looked like a resurgence after back-to-back defeat in India and against the Proteas. But was the away victory over Graeme Smith’s team what economists would call a ‘dead cat bounce’ – the short-lived but misleading rise of a plummeting stock before it plonks back down onto the ground, lifeless and worthless, like a cat lobbed out of an office window? If so, can Ponting and Nielsen resuscitate the cat? Are the Australians willing and able to kneel down and give mouth-to-mouth to a cat? Or is the cat actually fine? Did the cat deliberately throw itself out of the window to pass the time on a dull afternoon, play dead for a while to attract some attention, whilst planning to leap back to its feet and miaow, “I’m fine, never felt better, what are you all fussing about? I suppose a bowl of milk’s out of the question?”

(b) Because the entire Australian nation has completely lost its manhood. Where Merv Hughes sported a moustache that simply bellowed, “I mean business, and I’ve got half my lunch stuck on my upper lip to prove it,” now Peter Siddle has a small and unforgivable tuft of hair languishing apologetically below his mouth. And what about Haddin’s comments about Hauritz’s finger dislocation? “I don't know if I can talk about it,” wept the wicketkeeper, wiping a tear from his eye with a trembling glove. “I don’t like seeing those things,” he continued, whilst calling for a little teddy bear to cuddle to help him through the ordeal. “My stomach can’t handle it,” he concluded, before running away and hiding under a desk until he was sure it was safe to emerge. Allan Border must be spinning in his still-empty grave.

(c) They didn’t. No less an authority on the matter than Ricky Ponting said so, and he should know.

(d) Because of Rudi Koertzen.

	Michael Clarke took his test after reaching his hundred. Be inspired © AFP

QUESTION 3:
So did Michael Clarke really, honestly, mean it when he claimed before the first Test that “we’re as good as any team I have been part of for Australia”?

a) Yes. Absolutely. He believes it to the very bottom of his baggy green soul. But he is also suffering from major amnaesia after headbutting a large, moving truck. He cannot remember anything from before June 2009.

b) No. He’s not a total idiot. But, in the circumstances, he was unlikely to say: “Hauritz is a decent tweaker, but let’s be honest, he’s barely fit to play the same sport as Warney. Siddle gives it a go but if he’s Glenn McGrath then I’m Cyndi Lauper. And Mike Hussey is nowhere near as good as that guy Michael Hussey who played for us a couple of years ago.”

c) Yes. But he didn’t finish the sentence. He was distracted by a low-flying buzzard before he could continue: “... that has contained five players whose name begins with H. No doubt about it.” Or, possibly: “... at motorcycle pyramids. Yeah, we’re great at the old team stunt riding. Managed to get all eleven of us balanced on a Kawasaki last week whilst Punter pulled a wheelie. Bradman’s so-called ‘Invincibles’ could barely even ride a bicycle by comparison.”

QUESTION 4: Did Strauss really catch Hughes?

a) Yes, sure did, went in clean as a nun’s whistle. Look in the scorebook if you’re still not sure. Or, more practically, look at a scorecard in a newspaper or on the internet, they’ll probably be easier to access than the actual Lord’s scorebook. But the point stands. He’s the England Cricket Captain. Not any old Cricket Captain. The England Cricket Captain. By definition, he is the most honourable man in the known world.

b) Possibly. He probably caught it on the end of his fingers, but it might have brushed the grass on its way in, which he would not necessarily have felt. This explains why he celebrated spontaneously, and without the evil glint in his eye or demonic cackle that surely would have been present had he been pulling a fast one.

c) No. Clearly not. The ball almost bounced over his head before he caught it. The fact that he even thought about claiming the catch proves that the entire English nation has not only gone to the dogs, but it has dressed up in a cat outfit and is waiting for those dogs to eat it. This ‘catch’, if such a word is applicable to such an act of nefarious naughtiness, proves that the public school system is nothing more than a factory of cheats, liars and hoodwinkers.

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The remaining questions will be unleashed on Monday, including (in case any of you wish to do some revision before sitting Part 2): How much will England miss Kevin Pietersen? What is the solution to disputed catches? Who will win at Edgbaston? And, in retrospect, could the 12th-man glove-trundling incident in Cardiff have been the most important single moment in English cricket history?

The correct answers will be given after the Edgbaston Test, or possibly after Headingley, or even after the Oval, depending on when the truth makes itself known to the relevant authorities

Hello again Confectionery Stallers. I wrote last week about how the Cardiff Test made me feel like a teenager again, with its Australian dominance and voracious run-scoring painfully echoing 1989 and 1993. At Lord’s my regression continued – I felt like the 10-year-old that I was in 1985, watching England casually demolish substandard Australian bowling, then blast through a tentative top order. Is Freddie Flintoff really the new Richard Ellison?

To complete that distinctly mid-80s Ashes feeling, five Australians were good enough to get themselves out pulling or hooking in the first innings – as if an entire team of cloned Andrew Hilditches had taken the field.

At the age of 34, having never seen England even come close to defeating Australia at Lord’s (the last time England even took a first-innings lead over the Aussies at Lord’s was 1975), I had long since assumed this would simply be something that I would never see in my lifetime, alongside such distant but hopeless scenarios as England fielding a four-prong wrist-spin attack, the monarch leading Britain into battle again, Neil Armstrong landing on the moon for a second time, a dog being elected prime minister of a G8 nation, the Vatican becoming a Test-playing nation (although St Peter’s Square remains one of the flattest batting tracks in the Catholic world), the development of the self-cooking chicken, the extinction of the wasp, and lasting peace in the Middle East.

I am still finding it hard, therefore, to adjust psychologically to the fact that Hedley Verity is no longer the last man to have bowled England to victory in an Ashes Test at Cricket HQ.

Aside from being a jubilant occasion for English cricket, the first for a considerable time, this was a fascinating match. There was much good cricket, mostly by England, alongside a considerable amount of quite bad cricket, mostly by Australia. Everyone wants to make history at Lord’s, but few have done so quite as spectacularly as Mitchell Johnson, who recorded the most expensive 20-over analysis in Ashes history, as he cleverly removed the docile pitch from the delicate equation of cricket by aiming to pitch the ball wide of or beyond it.

Overall, it has been an evenly matched series so far, in that both sides have played one good match and one mostly rubbish one. If they both play well at the same time, or indeed if they both play rubbishly at the same time, we are in for a truly unforgettable game at some point in the series.

England got away with their Cardiff blooper, saved by a combination of Collingwood, a stubborn tail, fourth-day rain and a comatose pitch. Australia were not so fortunate at Lord’s. Monty Panesar’s sudden and unexpected conversion to being a genuine allrounder – a latter day St Paul, with similar publishing opportunities in the pipeline − now looks even more precious than it did at the time.

The unquestionable highlight of the second Test was the iconic, quintessentially Flintoffian second-innings bowling display by, appropriately enough, Andrew Flintoff. This was classic Flintoff – majestic, charismatic, unstoppable, game-changing, but statistically unremarkable. Relatively, at least. As momentous spells of bowling go, the figures of 5 for 92 barely scratch at the surface of what Flintoff did – the same analysis as Graham Dilley etched onto the Edgbaston honours board against Pakistan in 1987, and slightly inferior to Chris Silverwood’s immortal 5 for 91 as England subsided to an innings defeat at Cape Town in 1999-2000, or Paul Wiseman’s epoch-defining 5 for 90 for New Zealand in Bulawayo in September 2000.

5 for 92 – not quite as numerically memorable as Laker’s 10 for 53, Ambrose’s famous spell of 7 for 1, or Botham’s 28-ball stint of 5 for 1 at Edgbaston in 1981. Or even as his own, strikingly similar, 5 for 78 at The Oval in 2005.

The game was labelled by some as ‘Flintoff’s Match’ – rightly so, as his performance is what the game will be remembered for above all else – yet, as an all-round display, it was not quite as impressive as Abey Kuruvilla’s effort for India against Sri Lanka in Mohali in 1997-98. Kuruvilla scored 35 not out, compared to Flintoff’s 34 for once out, and took 6 for 117, as opposed to the English titan’s comparatively profligate 6 for 119. Few in the cricket world, however, talk excitedly of ‘Kuruvilla’s Match’. None, in fact. Not even members of the Kerala quite-quickman’s immediate family.

Yet, for drama, hostility, and the impact of one player grasping a match by the neck and throttling it until it stopped squeaking, Flintoff’s efforts on an unresponsive wicket on rebellious knees were staggering. If England take the series, Flintoff will retire from Tests as the first bowler in history to be able to claim that 50% of his career first-class five-wicket hauls had played decisive roles in securing Ashes.

He is a cricketer who transcends statistics. He will not be remembered for his apparently unremarkable numbers. Which is fortunate, because his statistics themselves are hugely misleading, to the extent that any half-decent judge would throw them out of court as evidence in the case of R. versus Flintoff’s Claims To Cricketing Greatness.

Ignore his career bowling average of 32.17 – identical to Ewen Chatfield’s to two decimal points, almost a run-per-wicket worse than Alan Mullally’s. Flintoff was barely even a bowler at all when he began in Test cricket. He took seven wickets in his first 10 Tests, and just 43 in his first 26 games, spread over five years to the end of the 2003 series with South Africa. His first Test wicket was just his eighth in first-class cricket, hardly the sign of a natural wicket-taker destined to take the world by storm. More the sign of a poor man’s Derek Pringle.

Essentially, Flintoff had to learn to bowl in the international arena (even today, over the course of his career, he has taken only 124 wickets in 104 first-class matches outside Test cricket, which is a fair few more than I have taken, admittedly, but fewer than the average county trundler). Since 2003, however, his long and usual bowling apprenticeship complete, he has taken 182 Test wickets in 51 games, at an average fractionally under 28 and with a strike-rate of 56 – figures in the same bracket as the likes of Jon Snow, Angus Fraser, Jeff Thomson, Merv Hughes, Darren Gough, Graham McKenzie and Wes Hall.

If modern batsman can be mentally debited around five runs from their career averages due to a combination of dead pitches, knackered bowlers, space-age bats and advertising-age boundaries, then bowlers should also be credited a little. If Flintoff had been bowling in the 1980s, and had entered the Test game somewhere near fully formed, I would suggest that his career average would almost certainly have been in the mid-to-low 20s.

Flintoff’s self-improvement, particularly as a bowler, aided by patience on the part of selectors and captains, is one of the most remarkable stories of modern English cricket. Seeing the shuffling 20-year-old who made an uncertain, ineffectual debut in 1998 against South Africa – two matches which brought him 17, 0 and 0 with the bat, and one wicket for 112 – who would have predicted that he would score even 370 Test runs or take 25 wickets, let alone 3700 and 225?

By all of which, what I really mean is: I’m going to miss him, and Test cricket is going to miss him. I don’t care if he sometimes bowls a bit too short, habitually gets out poking at something nondescript outside off stump, has occasionally drunk from a flagon containing something other than an isotonic sports drink, and hasn’t been involved in many England wins in recent years. (The last of these is hardly Flintoff’s fault. England haven’t been involved in many England wins of relevance in recent years.)

And if anyone is willing to donate a healthy pair of knees and ankles, I personally will contribute to a surgery fund to keep him going as a Test cricketer for the next five years. Whether he likes it or not.

To celebrate the once-in-anyone-under-the-age-of-75’s-lifetime occasion of an England Ashes win at Lord’s, The Confectionery Stall is delighted to announce the launch of the first ever Official Confectionery Stall Multiple Choice 2009 Ashes Mid-Series Quiz. The questions will be issued in the form of two exam papers, the first on Saturday, and the second on Monday.

If you score over 99.94% (the mark achieve by a computer simulation of the late Sir Donald Bradman when it sat this test), you will win the chance to captain your country in a Test match (subject to permission from the selectors and players of the relevant team).

Ah, the joys of youth. I spent most of the Cardiff Test feeling like a teenager again – in that it was harrowingly reminiscent of the 1989 and 1993 Ashes cloutings that England received. History, it seemed, was repeating itself like senile old biddy historians have always assumed it was. As the Australians tortured England’s bowlers and the English top order disintegrated more crumblily than a packet of dry biscuits in an earthquake, there cannot have been an England supporter who did not think at some point: “That’s that for the next fifteen years then.”

At lunch on the final day, I sat down with my wife and children and desperately attempted to write a list of positives for England take from the match. My family contributed little of use. My baby son seemed unwilling even to talk about it, so traumatising was the action unfolding before his seven-month-old eyes. I racked my brains, but did not make much progress beyond: (1) No-one died, (2) Worse things happen at sea, and (3) Shane Warne had taken fewer wickets than he had in any Ashes Test in England (or Wales) since the Oval Test of 1989. England have finally worked out how to play the Master Leggie – make sure that he (a) has retired, and (b) is in Las Vegas playing Poker. With hindsight, it now seems obvious.

However, the last-day heroics of Collingwood and the tail saved England’s extremely streaky bacon, and papered over some alarmingly seismic cracks in their performance. Looking on the positive side, ultimately time deprived England of the chance to push for victory. If only this had been a timeless Test – no side in the world would have fancied chasing an awkward 30 or 40 to win on a wearing sixth-day pitch.

It was an excellent end to a patchy Test. The wicket was consistently dull, offering minimal assistance to any bowler even on the final day. Only 25 wickets fell, and by my calculations, well over half of these were attributable more to batting error than bowling excellence.

England must therefore be congratulated for thinking not of themselves, but of the paying spectator and global TV audience, and making an exciting game of it – without their potent cocktail of carelessness and ineptitude in their first innings and a half, the game would have been a stultifying draw, rather than a nerve-clattering one.

Saving the game was a fine achievement, but on such a comatose surface, manoeuvring themselves into a position where defeat seemed inevitable was arguably even more remarkable.

England’s footwork in general was in an entirely different league to the Australians’ – some of it would even have been frowned upon in the West Kent Village League. Cook is a particular concern. He showed that the two main flaws that were apparent since the last time he faced Australia are still in fine working order.

It was notable that Pietersen, so roundly criticised for playing what was generally deemed a silly and needlessly aggressive shot in the first innings, received scant if any praise for playing no shot at all in the second. Hypocrisy on the part of the media? Perhaps. I would argue that he was too negative in both innings, and needs someone to say to him whatever it was that Vaughan said to him at lunch on day 5 of the 2005 Oval Test.

Certainly, if Pietersen had played the shot Prior concocted from the Encyclopaedia Of Wrong Shots, he would have been pilloried on pages 1-6, 23, and 45-56 of all national newspapers. It seems that he will always be a cricketer who does not merely split opinion, but who takes a chainsaw to it and goes Texan.

The rest of the top order owes Collingwood a strongly-worded thank-you letter. The Durham Defier added to his growing album of critically important innings, and even had the presence of mind to plink a catch to gully with the job nearly but not quite complete. Thus he further dented Australian confidence, by giving them the opportunity to try − and fail − to take the tenth wicket in the final 69 painfully tense balls. Monty Panesar’s bowling average of 34 now matches that of Garfield Sobers, and his batting is clearly starting to catch up as well.

If England had lost, such was the Australian dominance in every facet of the game apart from strategic glove ferrying, it would have been almost impossible to envisage Strauss’ men winning the series. As it is, the evidence on display in Cardiff suggests that it remains difficult to picture it, but, with a dose of imagination, a strong whisky and a blow to the head, it is possible. Unless they improve far and fast, however, if England want to take an open-top bus ride around London in August, they will have to queue up with the tourists and pay for it themselves.

So England managed to put themselves on the road to recovery. However, at Lord’s they must now endeavour not to swerve off it into a ditch at the first available opportunity. To do this, they must overcome the Hand Of History, which is flipping them an enormous bird and telling them they have no chance. England’s last Ashes win at the home of cricket occurred when Iran was still Persia, when Hitler was still considered to be in the ‘jaunty curiosity’ category by most of the world’s leaders, before briefs (closely followed by their rogue cousin, y-fronts) had revolutionised the world of underpants, and when Elvis Presley’s mummy was still waiting to feel the future King of Rock’n’Roll’s foetal hips gyrating provocatively in her womb for the first time.

Furthermore, if you wanted to have seen England win two Ashes Lord’s Tests, you would have to be the oldest man, or in the top ten oldest women, in the world – First World War veteran Henry Allingham, now aged 113, was 16 days old when WG Grace rumbled down the pavilion steps to lead England to a six-wicket victory in 1896. To put this in further context, there were still people alive at that point who had fought in the Battle of Waterloo. It is fair to say, then, that should England tear up both the history book and the form book, even the MCC members might muster a celebratory twitch of their collective moustache, if not quite a full whooping, shirts-off, chest-thumping, egg-and-bacon-tie-windmilling pitch invasion.

The Official Confectionery Stall Lord’s Test Prediction (Rough Version): Draw.

The Official Confectionery Stall Lord’s Test Prediction (Detailed Version): England 834-2 dec. Australia 103 all out and 23-9 (rain stopped play).

On second thoughts, it might be closer than that. I’ll stick with a simple ‘rainy draw’ forecast.

I will post again soon with some thoughts on the sad but inevitable retirement of Andrew Flintoff, a cricketer who has transcended his statistics, and, from 2003 to 2005, was touched all-round greatness; and the Official Confectionery Stall analysis of the 12th-Man-And-Physio Farrago, which brought England and Australia closer to war than anything since Bodyline.

Last Saturday’s episode of ‘Yes It’s The Ashes’, my Ashes comedy show on BBC Radio 5 Live, is available here.

Here are some of the early reviews of the most-talked about single production on the Cardiff arts scene in the last 24-hours – ‘That Shot’, starring Kevin Pietersen:

“Cocky... silly” – David Lloyd.
“Outrageous” – Michael Holding.
“Stupid shot” – Ian Chappell.
“Irresponsible... put undue pressure on the players below him... sometimes you have to play time and respect the bowler” – Michael Kasprowicz.
“One of the daftest shots a great player will play” – Geoffrey Boycott.
“A frantic sweep shot” – The Independent.
“Folly” − Sydney Morning Herald.
“A moment of madness” – Press Association.
“What on earth was Kevin Pietersen thinking about? Even by his own standards of unpredictability, his dismissal possessed no logic, especially at the start of an Ashes series” – David Hopps, The Guardian.

‘That Shot’ received a one-star panning across the board. However, the Confectionery Stall disagrees wholeheadedly with this analysis.

I would argue that Pietersen was not being cocky, silly, outrageous, irresponsible, record-breakingly daft, frantic, or mad enough. Rather, he was thinking too much, being too predictable, applying too much (possibly flawed) logic, and was perhaps overly constrained by the responsibilities of the first day of an Ashes series.

Pietersen was attempting a gentle paddle for a single, prepared to softly milk the udders of a bowler, when, in a different mood, he might have attempted to attach them to a high-powered industrial suction pump. It was hardly the height of folly.

If he had been in a more aggressive and instinctive frame of mind, he might have been better able to prevent Hauritz settling into a steady if unthreatening groove. As it was, KP had been regularly sweeping the off-spinner for singles, having logically concluded it was the safest way to keep the scoreboard chuntering contentedly to itself, and thus had become predictable enough that when he shaped to do so again, Hauritz was able to alter his line an induce the terminal, helmet-clonking error.

Admittedly, the assembled judges have a few more Test caps in their cricketing headgear cupboards than I do in mine (contents: a moth-eaten red sun hat I bought in a charity shop some years ago in a failed attempt to make myself bat more like Richie Richardson, and a Viking helmet purchased on eBay that is allegedly the one Wally Hammond wore on his Test debut to try to intimidate the young South African fast bowler Denys Morkel, who was known to be scared of Vikings).

To me, however, Pietersen is judged harshly due to his reputation, and because the shot looked hideous. His own denial that it was “over adventurous” was bang on the banana, and his widely-criticised claim that it was just the way he plays was also, I believe, close to the mark. The way he plays now is that of a calculating batsman who is far less of a risk-taker than in his early days in Test cricket. (Strap in for some numbers: in his last 35 Tests, his strike rate is 59, he has hit 16 sixes, one per 314 balls faced; in his first 18 Tests, he scored at 72 runs per 100 balls, and hit 32 sixes, one for 69 balls faced.)

Pietersen is a calculating player, who, from an unpromising start in cricket which casts doubt on those who claim he has supernatural innate cricketing gifts, has intelligently honed a technique for success. Arguably, he thinks too much, not too little, when batting. Personally, I hope that when the ball ricocheted off his carefully maintained head, it knocked some sense out of, not into, him.

There is another plausible explanation, however. Firstly, that Pietersen is a true sportsman, one who believes in fair play and sporting justice, and was merely balancing out the obvious injustice of being given not out to one of history’s more convincing lbw appeals. Perhaps Umpire Doctrove thought the ball was going under middle stump. Pietersen then attempted to give a catch to extra cover, and, having narrowly failed, then spooned one to short leg via his always-whirring bonce.

I would be interested to know what you think of my theory on this.

Overall, this has been a compelling start to the Ashes series. England, initially uncertain, then steadily conservative, took control of the game with an excellent mid-and-lower-order onslaught, displaying positivity that has sometimes been absent in recent years. Australia were bafflingly passive from a position of some strength at lunch on Day 1, facilitating England’s recovery. As I write, Phillip Hughes has been displaying his astonishing off-side timing and placement, as England patently fail to implement the plan they must have had for him. Flintoff has just come into the attack, and, after boding well with the bat, looks formidably ready with the ball.

The phoney war is over. After a build-up consisting of a couple of press conferences, some interviews, bits of general non-specific build-up, and, idiotically, no actual cricket to set the scene and establish the rivalry, the 2009 Ashes today makes its long-awaited transition from media frenzy into reality. I am a 34¾ -year-old father of two, and I am, frankly, a bit giddy with excitement.

At 11am, the world will gather around its TV sets and watch in amazement, as Aleem Dar emerges from the umpires’ module in the Cardiff pavilion, strides down onto the outfield where no man has previously stepped (at least, not in a Test match), and utters the immortal words: “Two small steps for two men (umpires, specifically), one giant leap for mankind (or, at least, the subset of mankind that consists of the cricket-watching publics of England and Australia).”

(Incidentally, so incredible was the 2005 Ashes that cynics have suggested that the entire series was a forgery, filmed in a studio in Texas, to stop the Russians hosting the perfect cricket series first. They cite as evidence Matthew Hoggard’s cover drive for four at Trent Bridge, a shot they claim was so unlikely and outlandish as to have been a patent hoax. And Ricky Ponting clearly flapped when he shouldn’t have flapped.)

Here, then, is the Unremittingly Official Confectionery Stall List Of The Six Factors That Will Decide This Ashes Series (excluding the six most obvious factors that will define the destiny of the urn, namely: (1) batsmen, (2) bowlers, (3) fielders, (4) wicketkeepers, (5) umpires, and (6) the magic bionic knuckle Nathan Hauritz bought from a backstreet alchemist’s shop in Cardiff yesterday).

Luck

Lady Luck is notoriously one of the world’s more fickle females, to the extent that many now question her suitability as a peer of the realm and role model to millions. Nevertheless, the flighty temptress absolutely loves cricket, keeps interfering with it, and will undoubtedly pay a visit to the Tests at some point.

In what appears likely to be a close-fought series, both sides would be well advised to get down on their bendiest available knees, offer to take her out for an extremely expensive meal, and beg her to be nice to them.

Four years ago, England, although the dominant team for most of the decisive part of the series, still needed some giant splodges of fortune custard dolloped on top of their otherwise excellent cricket crumble. They won 2-1. They could have won 3-1. They could also have lost 4-0, if Edgbaston, Trent Bridge and the Oval had taken slightly different courses at critical moments.

Admittedly, a 4-0 scoreline would have been the greatest miscarriage of sporting justice since Goliath was posthumously awarded the Slinger Of The Match medallion by a home-town adjudicator from the Philistine Board Of Single Combat. However, 4-0 could easily have happened. And, if it had, I don’t think I would ever have left my house again. And nor would any other self-respecting England cricket fan. (Have left their houses, not mine.) (In case there was some confusion.)

These prime slices of honey-roasted luck included:

− an inquisitive little cricket ball deciding to take a peek at the ground underneath Glenn McGrath’s foot on the first morning of the 2nd Test;

− Brett Lee seeing the juiciest imaginable wide, low full-toss with only four needed to win at Edgbaston, but failing to juice it;

− the marginal caught behind decision against Kasprowicz immediately afterwards, which was clearly out in all but reality;

− Pietersen’s first-ball edge off Warne on the final day at The Oval, which was heading straight towards the safe hands of Hayden at slip until it thought, “Hang on, do I really want to deprive the watching millions of one of the great modern innings? No, I do not, I’m going to deflect off Gilchrist’s gloves and take the battering I deserve”;

− the boundaries at The Oval not being set a quarter of a mile deeper, out in the streets of South London, otherwise Pietersen’s hooks for six off Lee could easily have been caught; and

− Don Bradman being born in 1908, as opposed to 1978.

Upon such slender threads...

Balls (1)

Which, if either, leader will be prepared to whip out his captaincy cojones, thud them both down on red, and spin the roulette wheel?

Ponting may be known as Punter (partly due to his youthful love of gambling, partly due to his predilection for propelling himself slowly up rivers with a long pole), but as captain he has not always donned a cavalier’s hat (the rarest headgear in Test cricket after the sombrero (which has not been seen in an Ashes Test since Douglas Jardine famously ‘went Mexican’ in the final Bodyline Test, charged down the wicket to Bert Ironmonger shouting ‘it’s chimichanga time’, and spooned a catch to Vic Richardson)).

In the Caribbean this year, the Strauss-Flower axis showed itself to be not merely risk-averse, but risk-allergic. The mere concept of taking a calculated gamble in an effort to recover from 1-0 down in the series seemed to bring them out in hives of indecision. At some point, they will need to shut their eyes, glug down a powerful tactical anti-histamine, and pray that they are not allergic to that as well.

Injuries

McGrath’s ankle was arguably the single most influential factor in 2005. He had taken 9 for 82 at Lord’s. He took 10 for 358 in the rest of the series. If only he had trodden on a cricket ball before every Ashes Test he played in, there might be a few more MBEs floating around English cricket.

Brett Lee is already out of at least one Test, probably more − a major disappointment for the series, as, with his pace, attitude and vulnerability to counterattack, it is scientifically impossible to conceive of cricket being dull whilst he is bowling. Australia are thus denied a fearsome-looking and perfectly balanced pace quartet. Regardless of Lee’s statistically unimpressive record in this country, and Australia’s victory in South Africa without him, this is a potentially decisive development.

His absence leaves Ponting and Katich as the Australian bowlers with most Test wickets in England, each boasting a grand total of one. If they remain at the top of that chart come the end of the Oval Test, England will be either deliriously parading around Trafalgar Square in an open-topped bus, or catastrophically embarrassed. Whilst Andy Flower tries to explain to an angry press conference why occasional left-arm wrist spin and dobbly medium pacers are the toughest types of bowling to face in Test cricket these days.

It seems almost inconceivable that Flintoff will last for five Tests, although the entire English cricketing nation will spend the next seven weeks rubbing soothing lotions and tinctures into its Big Freddie voodoo dolls. Pietersen is irreplaceable, in terms of talent, tempo and temperament. If Cook or Strauss is injured, England have no Test-hardened cover.

But the key injury victim could be an unexpected one – Nathan Hauritz. Following his unimpressive performances in the warm-up games, and the rest of his career to date, the off-form offie will be keeping a sharp eye on his team-mates.

I am not suggesting that they will deliberately injure Hauritz. Far from it. But I am suggesting that, if they see him walking down the road, unaware that an especially slippery looking banana skin lies ahead on the pavement ... well, they might not warn him quite as quickly and loudly as they would alert Mitchell Johnson in the same scenario.

And then, when it subsequently emerges that McGain, Krezja, White and the rest have mysteriously all simultaneously lost their passports and been handcuffed to a lamppost in Alice Springs, Ponting will make a televised appeal to the patriotic nature of a certain member of the TV commentary team, and the rest will be talkative history.

Balls (2)

Recent research shows that most British cows, when facing up to the icy, mechanised hand of death, spend their final conscious moments hoping that their leathery hides will be made into Test-grade cricket balls. A lucky few beasts will be unwittingly playing potentially pivotal roles in this summer’s action, and how they choose to behave in the hands of Anderson and Johnson could dictate the series.

The Australians will have to adapt to the unfamiliar Duke ball, which is different to the Kookaburra used down under, which is made, I believe, of a fossilised platypus egg coated in a beer-soaked kangaroo pouch.

Stepping up to the plate

In competitive eating, ‘stepping up to the plate’ is merely phase one in a campaign of intestinal mayhem, base camp on the Everest of Herculean Hot-Doggery.

In the Ashes, however, both teams will need new heroes not just to step up to the plate, but to dive into that plate face first, with the fearlessness of an angry wife in a shopping centre, and keep eating up until victory is assured.

Each side is likely to start today with only three of their first-choice XI from 2005, and many reputations will be made and broken in this series. Is Hussey the untouchable perfectionist who averaged 85 in his first 20 Tests, or the uncertain grinder who averages 30 in his the last year and a half? Is Cook’s Test average of 45 that of a maturing master bordering on world-class, or of a flat-track accumulator flattered by the age in which he plays?

Will Broad ever be a major wicket-taker? Prior and Bopara certainly cut the mustard against West Indies, but the mustard was Scandivianly mild and came ready-cut. Will their cleaving be as effective against an altogether more nose-watering class of condiment? Is Pietersen able to dominate an entire series? Is Hughes the world’s next batting genius, or a flawed rookie with much to learn? Or both? I cannot remember a series in which there were so many uncertainties.

Choke Management

In 2005, England arguably managed to choke three times − in the second innings (with bat and ball) at Edgbaston, chasing at Trent Bridge, and on the final morning at the Oval – but still win. Having stepped up to the plate, they found themselves struggling to keep their food down, but they managed to Heimlich themselves to safety each time.

In Adelaide, they collectively turned a slight tickle in the throat into paroxysmic spasms of self-asphyxiation. If the series is close, the side better able to suppress the early splutterings of a choke, should emerge triumphant.

OFFICIAL CONFECTIONERY STALL SERIES PREDICTION

I have absolutely no idea what will happen. Both sides have enough question marks hanging over them to punctuate a Spanish quiz book. So I will guess that Australia will win 3-1. I hope I’m wrong. England can certainly win, but I think the English media underestimate the Australian pace attack (even without Lee). England have lost their last two late-summer home series. And I am a born pessimist. Roll on 11 o’clock.

You can listen to my Ashes radio comedy show ‘Yes It’s The Ashes’ on BBC 5 Live.

Obituary: Michael Vaughan’s Cricket Career (1993-2009). Passed away peacefully in its sleep, aged 16, after a long decline. Will be extremely fondly remembered by all who knew it.

Farewell, then, Michael Vaughan’s Cricket Career. Never again will the cricket world delight in a cover drive that seemed to have been plucked and polished from a 1900s coaching manual entitled “How To Score Runs In An Honourable Manner”.

It had seemed that the script was written for Vaughan to make an emotional comeback to the England team for the Lord’s Test after Andrew Strauss slipped a disc trying to hit Nathan Hauritz for a sixth consecutive six on the way to defeat in Cardiff, then leading England to their first head-quarters Ashes win for 75 years with a sensational unbeaten double hundred, and concluding the summer by clinching the Ashes on the final afternoon of the series with a spell of 8 for 23 on a turning wicket, before leaving the ground in a special hot air balloon, shouting through a loud hailer, “There, I told you I’d still got it.”

Unfortunately, that script was read, rejected and recycled by the commissioning editors of cricket, who plumped instead for something disappointingly more mundane – a slow fade-out in the relative obscurity of county cricket, followed by a low-key press conference with Hugh Morris.

Injuries have perhaps denied him a late blossoming – by the time Graham Gooch was a year older than Vaughan is now, he had scored only 8 of his eventual 20 Test hundreds. But the press conference gave further proof that Vaughan has made the right decision – the shocking revelation that his small son had joined the list of Unlikely People To Have Dismissed Michael Vaughan, alongside Ricky Ponting, Ramnaresh Sarwan and Daan van Bunge (although whether Vaughan junior can replicate that level of performance in the pressure-cooker atmosphere of international cricket, rather than the gentle surrounding of the back garden, remains to be seen).

	'He was viewed by the great Australian team as one of the finest they had faced.' © Getty Images

For a man who once destroyed the might of Australia in their own back yard, to be clean bowled by Archie Vaughan, 3, in his own back yard, clearly set alarm bells ringing − alarm bells which prompted Vaughan to send out the fire engine of common sense to douse the remaining embers of a sometimes magnificent and always compelling career.

In the pantheon of odd statistical cricket career shapes, Vaughan’s batting provides one of the oddest. In his first 16 Tests over two-and-a-half years, he had an average of 31 and strike rate of 40, with one century.

There had been little to suggest what was to follow. Then, in an 8-month, 12-Test incandescence in the summer of 2002 and the Ashes of 2002-03, he emblazoned seven hundreds into the history books, with an average of 76 and a strike-rate of 61, batting of a quality that few have surpassed. He was viewed by the great Australian team as one of the finest they had faced.

Again, there had been little to suggest what was to follow – a rather middling Test career. Increasingly niggled by injuries, perhaps encumbered by the captaincy, and mostly no longer opening the batting, he averaged just 36 in his last 54 Tests, with a strike rate of 50. Ten centuries punctuated periods of carelessness, lucklessness, and formlessness, but these were occasional peaks, rather the Himalayan achievements suggested by his 2002, and he too often tobogganed straight back down the other side of them back into the Valley Of Inconsistency.

At the start of 2003, Vaughan seemed to have the batting world at his feet. Unfortunately, the batting world, like the real world, turned out to be round, not flat, and the Lancastrioyorkshireman spent the rest of his career trying to balance his feet on it, with only intermittent success.

So did Vaughan underachieve, given the stratospheric heights he once reached, or generally fulfil his potential with one brief blast of overachievement? His career first-class average of 36 suggests that his final Test figure of 41 was one of player who, overall, made the most of his natural gifts, although the ease and beauty of his best batting may have led us to expect more.

(A side note for graph fans. Broken into sections and plotted on a graph, Vaughan’s batting average forms a career shape known to some scientists as ‘The Lopsided Sombrero’, or, to others, as the ‘Meerkat Popping His Head Up Above A Baseball Mound’. This compares with, for example, Matthew Hayden’s ‘Bactrian Camel Drinking From A Puddle’ (three slumps (periods in which he averaged 24, 30 and 23) sandwiching two humps (69 and 60)); or Brian Lara’s ‘Stuntman Chickening Out Of Jumping The Grand Canyon And Instead Riding Down One Side, Across The Middle, And Up The Other Side, Then Continuing On For A While To Escape The Disappointed Fans’ (average of 60 in his first 31 and last 51 Tests, 40 in the 49 Tests in the middle). Mike Gatting can also claim The Sombrero, although, with averages of 23 and 22 stretching out either side of a peak period of 62, his was pulled down lower over the wearer’s head than Vaughan’s. The Sombrero is probably the most common career shape, but few have had as tall or pointy a crown as Vaughan. More on this in a future blog. If you can bear to wait.)

	Archie Vaughan, son of Michael, demon bowler in the making © AFP

I have followed Vaughan’s fluctuating career with particular interest. We were born in the same month, and have much else in common besides – neither of us had played a Test match by the age of 25, we were both at some point schoolboys, we both list breakfast amongst our top four favourite meals of the day (I assume), we were both best as opening batsmen, neither of us is quite as mobile as we once were, we both like cricket, we can both be backed at 10,000-1 to win a Nobel Prize for Physics, and he got as many laughs as I did during a gig at the Rawhide Comedy Club in Liverpool in 2002 (although he at least had the excuse of not being on the bill due to his prior commitment to smashing Australia to all parts in that winter’s Ashes; I, by contrast, would have been able to hear my own footsteps as I left the stage, were they not being drowned out by the footsteps of the audience leaving the venue).

Having lived these almost parallel lives, it seems appropriate, in solidarity with my exact contemporary, the most significant England cricketer of our generation, and the man who, more than any other, stood in the way of my own dreams of becoming England captain, that I today also announce my retirement from all forms of professional cricket. Not that there were not a few million others also standing in the way – but Vaughan was the biggest obstacle of all, with his innovative, positive and record-breaking leadership.

He deserved a more fitting exit than this. Other recent former England captains have been more fortunate. His predecessor Nasser Hussain stepped off the international stage at Lord’s in 2004 exactly the way he would have wanted to go – scoring a match-winning hundred and running out one of his team mates.

Alec Stewart was applauded around the Oval the previous year after what seemed like an unbroken 5-day Barmy Army farewell serenade. Having spent two days at that game in close proximity to some of the top Barmy regiments, I have it indelibly inscribed upon my soul that there is, incontrovertibly, “only one Alec Stewart”.

Mike Atherton had exited the same arena in 2001 to the resounding applause of a grateful public willing to overlook the scorebook entry of “c Team Nemesis b Individual Nemesis 9” (or “c Warne b McGrath 9” as Wisden insisted on recording it) in recognition of his years of noble resistance.

Vaughan was one of England’s most stylish batsmen of all time, one of its greatest captains, dropper of some of its easiest catches, and bowler of probably the single greatest off-break in English cricket since the days of Laker, when he bowled a fully-firing Tendulkar for 92 at Trent Bridge in 2002, for one of his six career wickets. If he did not prove to be the great batsman he appeared to have become in 2002, he is unquestionably an English cricket great, and will be missed by all cricket supporters.

Apologies for my unscheduled absence for the last couple of weeks. Hear my thoughts on Pakistan’s magnificent victory in the World Twenty20 in the Zaltzman Report audio show. I hope you have enjoyed the audio (whether you have listened to it or not) (although clearly listening to it is (hopefully) more likely to cause you to enjoy it).

I will return with more later in the year. During the Ashes, I will be hosting a comedy show called ‘Yes, It’s The Ashes’, at 11am on Saturday mornings on BBC Radio 5 Live, starting this Saturday. It will also be available via the BBC website. I will also regularly updating The Confectionery Stall as often as work, fate and wife allow.