Several times today the Barmy Army bugler Billy Cooper showed off a new addition to his repertoire: the Last Post. This is mine at Eye on the Ashes. I have filed a report for Guardian Unlimited, and a series round up for the newspaper, so here are just a few passing observations.

Andrew Flintoff spoke well at his press conference – as well as he has, at least. He wore his England cap, as he usually does: a statement of allegiance now that the statement of intent is irrelevant. He was asked some good questions, and gave no excuses. Christopher Martin-Jenkins asked him about England’s circumscribed preparation. Flintoff declined to use it as a prop for England’s meekness at Brisbane: ‘I was ready to play a Test match.’ The question remains, I think, whether he was ready to play a Test match against Australia in Australia.

Continue reading "Goodbye to all that"

	'This is his 50th Test, and Harmison is a middling first-change bowler: the personification of English underachievement' © Getty Images

Steve Harmison bowled pretty well yesterday and fronted the media last night with rather more fight and aggression than he showed in his first over in Brisbane. ‘At the end of the day I don’t know what else we could have done.’ ‘At the end of the day I try my hardest’. That’s the trouble, really: from Harmison, it’s always at the end of the day. This is his 50th Test, and he is a middling first-change bowler: the personification of English underachievement.

Having loosened up, Harmison also gave a surly interview to Mike Atherton on Sky. Was he sad to be going home at the end of the match? No. Looking forward to putting his feet up. What would he be doing to make sure he was ready for the first test of the English summer? Didn’t know: waiting for Duncan Fletcher to tell him. I'll give him points for candour, but the sentiment was subtly revealing.

Continue reading "No Harm done"

	© Getty Images

Branson’s grasp of the Ashes, it is fair to say, is not sophisticated; but nor is the issue itself completely straightforward, because the trophy is twice incarnated, as the Ashes (Actual) and the Ashes (Symbol). For those who’ve just joined us, let me briefly explain.

The Ashes (Symbol) derive from the original death notice for English cricket in the Sporting Times after the Oval Test of 1882, placed there by Reginald Brooks aka Watkinshaw, a pioneering work of English sporting masochism but also a riff on the cremation debate. The first cremation in England wasn’t until January 1884 - the work of the latterday druid Dr William Price – and it was at the time of the Oval Test a proverbial hot potato.

Continue reading "A burning sensation"

It was hard to imagine Johnny Carson without Ed McMahon’s preamble: ‘And now, heeeeere’s Johnny.’ But does the world’s greatest Test wicket-taker really need an introduction as elaborate as he received today? Having given his hat to the umpire, dropped his bowling disc on the ground and begun the disposition of his forces, the SCG announcer thundered: ‘Change of bowling at the Randwick End. Ladies and gentlemen, would you please make welcome…[wait for it]…Shane Warne!’ Was this to distinguish him from Shane Watson, perhaps?
It’s fair to say that this was not a talent the announcer confined to Warne. When play resumed after rain, the umpires were greeted like long lost friends. ‘Ladies and gentleman, please welcome onto the SCG, Aleem Dar…and Billy Bowden.’ Such was the pause between the first and second names that one half expected Aleem Dar…and Sir Richard Branson. Not as silly as it sounds.

GOING OFF IN BAGGY GREEN AND GOLD: Seen at Melbourne airport yesterday: the smiling images of Justin Langer and Glenn McGrath exhorting Aussie fans to ‘Go Off In Green and Gold’ this summer. A useful reminder: retirement not only denies Cricket Australia their services as cricketers, but as recognizable and marketable personalities. The rebuilding challenge was embodied in the photo’s third face: Shane Watson. Perhaps Central Casting was asked for a blonde called Shane. There’ll be one fewer in a week.

Continue reading "Postcards from the SCG"

Tucked in the corner of the ‘Eyes, Lies & Illusions’ exhibition at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image is some footage from an old Kinora: a device, invented by the Lumiere brothers, in use a hundred years ago for screening short movies in the home. Its period of popularity was brief, for the movies themselves were very brief, usually about 25 seconds long, and the Lumiere’s new-fashioned cinematographe was about to sweep the world.

The display case promises ‘A Game of Cricket’, and what should pop up, between 25 seconds of a silently trumpeting elephant and 25 seconds of a smoke-shrouded dreadnought, but 25 seconds of Ranji and C. B. Fry, essaying a few strokes in front of what looks like Crystal Palace?

Continue reading "An eye for cricket"

In his press conference cum inquest after the Melbourne Test, Andrew Flintoff offered the praise for his team and its retinue that they were ‘a fantastic blend of people’, which made it sound like he had put together a particularly successful dinner party. On the other hand, the combination of personalities does matter in a touring side. Yesterday, after my daily 2000 words, I popped out to Yarraville to watch composite teams from the Victoria Turf Cricket Association, in which I’m a player, and Free Foresters CC, the wandering English amateurs, whose wanderings have brought them to Australia this summer.

Free Foresters are one of those English clubs - see also I Zingari, Incogniti, Frogs, Cryptics, Yellowhammers et al - whose provenance and purpose leave Australians slightly puzzled, engendering tremendous loyalty with apparently no more than a dazzling blazer (crimson, green and white), mysterious symbol (a Hastings knot, loosely tied) and paradoxical motto (‘United, Though Untied’). Its origins lie 150 years ago in the Forests of Arden, famous as the backdrop to As You Like It, and of Needwood, not famous at all, and known only to tree tragics.

Continue reading "Gentlemen and Players"

I wasn't in a position to see a replay of Rudi Koertzen's refusal of the lbw appeal against Alistair Cook, so suspended judgement, and have only just caught up with it. Laughable. Perhaps there's something significant in Koertzen using his left hand, and he would give correct decisions if he swapped to his right. Umpires build reputations as 'outers' and 'not outers', according to the burden of evidence they expect for upholding an appeal. The trouble with Koertzen is that he seems completely unpredictable, giving everything one day and nothing the next. Anyway, happy new year and maintain your rage.

There have been a few legends involved in this game, but only two 'Legends'. The Australian and St George’s flags were escorted onto the field on Day One by local and visiting 'Ashes Legends'. In the baggy green and gold corner, Bill Lawry; from the Anglosphere, Dennis Amiss.

In the latter case, the word ‘legend’ must have been used in its liberal modern interpretation. No disrespect intended to a stout-hearted opening batsman – and one who was kind enough to give me his autograph at Kardinia Park in 1978 – but his main contribution to the Anglo-Australian game was the enrichment of Dennis Lillee’s legend: he made 305 runs in Ashes Tests at 15.25. Surely a greater Ashes Legend was on hand. Derek Pringle doesn’t look very busy at the moment.

"I just close my eyes and whang it down anyway, so there's not much planning there." Thus Matthew Hoggard, bringing the house down at his press conference last night, in response to the mysterious straying of England’s bowling plan. And quite so: the plan is mainly of curiosity rather than strategic value.

Mind you, noone would be surprised were it Sajid Mahmood’s copy, as he was not bowling to any recognizable logic either. He has an athletic run-up, a good turn of speed, and bowls a remarkable variety of deliveries, including a change-up that reminds me of the pitcher Tommy Johns’, whose slower ball was said to be so slow that he could walk alongside it. But he is as raw as sushi: an international bowler must be able to bowl consecutive deliveries in the same place. If Martin Johnson hadn’t used it to describe Devon Malcolm, he would deserve the tag ‘Lightning’ for never striking twice in the same place.

Another day, another Koertzen clanger. Symonds (56) hit on the back leg by Panesar, the ball seemingly headed for middle stump, about six inches from the top. Nope. Ho-hum. At least he’s another day closer to retirement.

	'We have a new Everest [Warne], and Murali’s K2' © Getty Images

Before the day’s play, there was a certain amount of press-box debate not merely about Shane Warne’s chance of a 700th wicket, but of his chance of a 706th. Warne took six wickets in last year’s Super Test. What might happen were that pretty daft and pointless game to have its Test status revoked? It can happen. After all, Wisden gave Alan Jones a Test cap for playing against the Rest of the World in 1970 only to confiscate it later.

Some press box talking points last longer than others: this one seems to have been more or less disposed of by today’s events. Unless, of course, it’s decided that the entitlement to top level status of Tests against Bangladesh and Zimbabwe should be reviewed. In which case Warne would have rather less to lose than Muttiah Muralitharan: 17 wickets versus 137. But however you count it, 700 is a stupendous quantity of Test wickets. I was at the Melbourne Test just over 30 years ago when Lance Gibbs broke Fred Trueman’s record of 307. It seemed like the scaling of Everest. Now we have a new Everest, and Murali’s K2.

Continue reading "Everest and K2"

Had a hit today with a few of my Yarras teammates. We'd all been out to see bands the night before. I'd been to see The Models at the Espy, they'd been to see Mick Thomas at the Corner, and had passed a considerably heaver night. Found myself, as a result, in relatively sparkling form. It's all about preparation.

We no longer play cricket in Australia on Christmas Day - except maybe in the backyard in the afternoon, to stave off post-prandial stupor. Oddly, perhaps, given how long Sabbath observance persisted in Australian cricket, we used to. West Indies won a Test at Adelaide Oval on Christmas Day 1951, and the ground also developed a tradition of Queensland v South Australia Sheffield Shield matches at the time. One day, the story goes, a barracker from the hill shouted to Ken Mackay: 'Piss off Slasher. You've been bumming Christmas dinners off us for long enough!' These days, however, Christmas is merely Boxing Day Test Match Eve. So enjoy whatever you're up to and I'll meet you back here in a couple of days.

Most natural disasters are low-key by comparison with the retirement of Shane Warne, but Glenn McGrath’s post-practice press conference to announce the end of a career so splendoured seemed extraordinarily subdued, like the Rolling Stones being reduced for their farewell gig to playing covers in a pub. In his keenly observed account, my colleague Andrew Miller describes it as ‘strangely fitting’, McGrath being a cricketer without affectations or flourishes, and he may well be right. Yet it was also another confirmation of the Warne phenomenon which, like a fire exhausting all the oxygen in the room, somehow manages to leave little over for colleagues – even one as marvellous as McGrath. The humourist Beachcomber (J. B. Morton) famously defined ‘bombshell’ as ‘the omission of a cricketer from a team’. Much of cricket season also overlapping with ‘silly season’ in news and current affairs, Warne's valediction has much the same effect.

Continue reading "Glenn McGrath: The sting in the tail"

	Shane Warne possessed a fast bowler's aggression in a slow bowler's skin © Getty Images

I seem to have been talking about Shane Warne all day, to people who know lots about cricket, and many who don’t, because he was the cricketer of whom everyone had heard, and on whom everyone held an opinion. My mum had a view on Warne. The girl at the post office and the guy at the servo, who know I’m into cricket, wanted to talk about him. I didn’t get to the presser because I had to field talkback calls about him on the ABC: it is fair to say that there was a wide range of very emphatic views.

It was said of Augustus that he found Rome brick and left it marble:
the same is true of Warne and spin bowling. But just because Warne has done it with such apparent ease, noone should underestimate the degree of difficulty involved. Have you tried to bowl a leg-break? I’ve been playing club cricket since I was nine, and I would give anything to be able to bowl a proper one, but they either hurtle into the ground or fly off into outer space like a malfunctioning satellite. Yet Warne can drop them as precisely as a dragon fly alighting on a lily pad.

Continue reading "Positive spin"

Cricinfo is reporting that former Test stars are ‘shocked’ by Channel Nine’s foretelling of Shane Warne’s retirement. They believe that he could go on for yonks – and in that they’re probably right. But that’s not the point. Desire in this case, I suspect, is more significant than ability. He’s not the messiah, of course – just a very naughty boy. Yet on the half-dozen or so occasions I’ve interviewed him, Warne has spoken about his family with unfeigned sincerity. At the risk of emulating E. W. Swanton’s habit of quoting himself, these are some lines I wrote about Warne for the Guardian back in October:

‘The imponderable in Warne’s considerations is his personal future, now delicately poised, with he and Simone maintaining a loose orbit round one another and their children, but passionately protective of their privacy. Warne was incensed when a female television journalist accosted him after his dismissal at the WACA Ground to voice rumours they had reconciled: a brave move without a helmet. A more ‘up close and personal’ cricket coverage has been mooted for this summer’s Ashes, with the revival of the old boundary-edge interview. Warne may be tempted to issue press releases instead.

Continue reading "Warne out?"

Sixteen years to win them back. Fifteen days to lose them. That’s one press box formulation I’ve already heard for England’s Ashes defeat. In fact, it doesn’t do the Australian effort justice. This campaign to recapture the Ashes has genuinely been 462 days in the making. It’s been fascinating to watch the systematic nature of the Australian preparation for this series – not least because of its contrast with England’s ‘it’ll-be-all-right-on-the-night’ thinking.

Continue reading "One blows, the other sucks"

	Shane Warne showed 'the depth of his character, competitiveness, obstinacy and optimism' on the fourth day at Perth © Getty Images

When you’ve as many Test wickets as Shane Warne, I suppose you can afford to be philosophical. But if ever a bowler deserved more for his dedication, it was Warne yesterday, who ended the day with 1 for 100 for 31 fierce, feisty and fun overs.

Great as he is on days like the last at Adelaide, where his self-belief fuels an entire XI, I somehow relish him more in situations like this, where he shows the depth of his character, competitiveness, obstinacy and optimism. I’ve tried to convey some of those depths in a couple of pieces for the Guardian today, although I so enjoy watching Warne bowl that it’s almost a shame to spoil it by writing: it’s like explaining a magic trick.

Continue reading "Breathtaking Warne-O-Scope"

Some commenters this morning have responded with doubt and asperity to my remark that Adam Gilchrist 'may not be the greatest wicketkeeper batsman in history'. It was mainly a rhetorical construction, but it brought us back to the never ending debate about how well a keeper should be expected to bat: it's no longer, I agree, a question of whether a keeper should be able to bat at all. The answer, I think, will always depend on the team: an XI with two spinners and a solid all-rounder at number seven, for instance, will place a greater accent on glovework than an XI with four fast bowlers and no all-rounder.

For the record, I think Alan Knott is the greatest wicketkeeper batsman in history. I do, however, think that Gilchrist is the greatest batsman wicketkeeper, and that it's a shame he never had the opportunity to bat at number six for an extended period. I am also persuaded that, at his best, Don Tallon was the greatest keeper - Sir Donald Bradman is not a bad advocate to have in your corner. Who you picked would depend on your team. Any other candidates?

Continue reading "More on Adam & Rudi"

On a day of centuries, the first and one of the more important was registered by the thermometer. The temperature was 38 celsius (100.4) at noon; 39.5 (103.1) at lunch, Hussey having just miscued a pull shot at Harmison over the head of slip for four. Had anyone requested a fried egg at the interval, the top of Harmison’s head would have come in handy.

The sun blazed. The ground seemed to shimmer. Breathing was like inhaling the backdraft of a jet engine. Spectators on the WACA’s grassed areas could be observed fanning themselves with their ‘Tonked’ placards – equivalent of the npower ‘4’ and ‘6’ boards. It is a wonder that keen-eyed sponsors did not equip the players with their own.

Continue reading "A day of centuries"

	Panesar was welcomed to the wicket today with a universal cheer and after his full-blooded sweep for four from Warne, the roar shook the temporary seating © Getty Images

Panesar didn’t even bowl particularly well on the first day, struggling with the breeze in his face, and needing the support of his captain to get through a spell where he was too often short and wide. Nonetheless, the dimension he added to England’s attack was palpable: his dismissal of Gilchrist was a collector’s piece of slow left-arm bowling. So was his personality, infectious even in the field, where his presence had previously been depicted in such dismaying terms. His wicket-taking celebrations, of course, make Jean Borotra look like Steve Davis.

Continue reading "Sikh and ye shall find"

Catch of the Day: Ian Bell usually looks all dressed up with no place to go when under the lid at short leg, but his squat, swivel and dive to collect Gilchrist’s edge was symbolic of England’s new resolve.

Ball of the Day: Bell was its undeserving recipient: the kind of which batsmen have nightmares, short, rearing, compelling a shot, doing enough to get the edge. At least, he can cite it as proof of his improvement since 2005: it is taking better deliveries to get him out.

Continue reading "Postcards from the WACA"

In a poll last year, readers of the Guardian and Observer declared Perth their favourite overseas city. English cricketers cannot have been overrepresented among the respondents. The thoroughfare into which one turns from Perth’s airport towards the CBD is Brearley Avenue. Mike deserves at least a street: he’s the only English captain to win a Test here.

The West Australian Cricket Association Ground had a wild and woolly wicket that season - MCC bowled the home state out for 52 and 78 in the tour match – and England sported perhaps its best pace attack of the modern era: Willis, Botham, Hendrick, Lever. What England would do for any one of these bowlers now. Otherwise, the WACA has been an Australian playground, and its name evocative of pace, bounce, heat, light and, of course, wind – the Fremantle Doctor was to Dennis Lillee what the Sussex sea fret was to Maurice Tate.

Continue reading "Perth - the (Mr) Cricket City"

	'Only India, Australia and England among the Test nations operate profitably' © Cricinfo Ltd

In his account of the evolution of the famous American sports cable channel ESPN: The Uncensored History (2000), Michael Freeman describes a programming discussion between Bill Rasmussen and his son Scott on the eve of its launch. ‘Dad, play football all day for all I care,’ Scott finally exclaimed. ‘I’m just sick of talking about this.’ Bill Rasmussen did a doubletake: ‘Why not? I mean, why not? What’s wrong with football all day?’

Today, owned by Disney Corporation, ESPN is a round-the-clock sports juggernaut: among other claims to fame, it is George Bush’s favourite television entertainment of choice. And now it is in the cricket biz: in conjunction with Rupert Murdoch’s Star Sports TV, ESPN has acquired the rights to broadcast International Cricket Council events/tournaments from 2007 to 2015. Cricket all day? Why, it already is – and the night as well! No wonder the 'bundle' was chased with such avidity, with eventual financial benefit to cricket being tipped to exceed $US1 billion.

Continue reading "Money changes everything"

Perhaps the most revealing feature of Damien Martyn’s retirement announcement is the admission that he felt unequal to challenge of being ‘more than 100 per cent committed, dedicated, disciplined and passionate about the game’, as among Australians is now de rigueur. The minimum dedication standard was recalibrated last year when Matt Hayden said that he was ‘one billion per cent’ behind Ricky Ponting; the writing may have been on the wall for Marto ever since.

Continue reading "My favourite Martyn"

I’m declaring this Casual Friday at ‘Eye on the Ashes’, in order that I might share a personal story. Some readers acquainted with my book 'The Vincibles' (2002), a diary of a season at my club the Yarras, may recall our stalwart player AB. Anthony Burnell was the inaugural captain of our Fourth XI, and a better bloke at a cricket club there can seldom have been. Noone stayed later, sank more beers or rolled a bigger spliff; noone obtained more hilarity from committee and selection meetings, this being what they were mainly good for; noone was a better karaoke partner, our duet of ‘Submission’ by the Sex Pistols carrying off the Yarras’ most coveted honour six years ago. His dad Ron, and brothers Mick and Rich also played at the club; Rich is still the only teammate I have seen bat in reflecting shades.

Continue reading "A Word from AB"

Among many views of the Second Test, this next is among my favourites: an email from Tom White, a great servant of the Henty & District Cricket Club, who play in the Holbrook & District CA. I wrote the foreword to the club's history a few years ago: it is a little classic of its kind, populated by such legendary personages as Hulky, Daisy, Sticks, Slabba, Wilba, Maggot, Hooters, Rusty, PP, the Axeman and the Terror. I always enjoy Tom's perspective on the game - in this case, that of the hard-pressed man of the land....

"Whilst listening to the reflections of Peter Roebuck the other day on the wonderful twists and turns on the last day of the test I though once again about the old chestnut,” does life reflect cricket or does cricket reflect life”? We have had a lot of time to think lately, us farmers in Australia, and in particular those in the Riverina, (the food bowl of the nation? Not this year mate).

Continue reading "The View from the Doodle Cooma Arms"

Thanks to all those commenting on this blog, both those agreeing and disagreeing. I haven't responded directly because I'm a/ very busy and b/ a Luddite, but I've enjoyed your thoughts, and also the occasional greeting from long lost Yarras comrades! The only specific response I would make is to those who think I was somehow dissing Michael Hussey for being called Mr Cricket. It was a joke, dears. Time to move on. Furthermore, while I don't mind civilised disagreement, I will also be deleting comments that contain gratuitous personal insults, especially from those who regard England's Second Test defeat as a triumphant vindication of the Australian way of life, John Howard, beer served cold etc. There are plenty of outlets for you already.

From Dunkirk to Burma, from India to Hong Kong, the English used to excel in tactical retreat and strategic withdrawal. Why have their cricketers become so naff at it? Their display on Tuesday veered between transfixed inactivity to ill-timed spasms of aggression, the prosaic nature of the challenge of playing for a draw seeming to hold no appeal for them. A year ago in Perth, the South Africans Jacques Rudolph and Justin Kemp gave a superb display of positive defence to stalemate Australia. They set themselves to score in certain sectors of the field, but not others. They carefully restarted with every bowling change. They turned over the strike to exploit their left/right-hand contrast. England had noone prepared to emulate their example. Kevin Pietersen might have run himself out in getting off the mark; the sweep to his first ball from Warne then put him in the Private Pike category of stupidity.

Continue reading "The Difference Between Retreat and Surrender"

Uncertainty is a glorious feature of cricket – except occasionally when you’re writing about it. Such an occasion has just been had, when almost to a man the media consigned the Adelaide Test to the oblivion of a drawn, only to see Ricky Ponting’s team turn around and win it. I didn’t explicitly tip a draw, but I didn’t think Ponting had done enough to win it – nor did I think Australia really deserved to. I’ll leave being wise after the event to others. It’s time to grab that mirror and take a good hard look at myself!

I didn’t think England would be as bad as at Brisbane. In fact, they were better for four days and hugely worse on the last, so I can’t take much credit for that. I didn’t think the toss would be decisive, any more than it was during the very similar Test here three years ago between Australia and India; on the other hand, I also believed that Australia had been shut out of the game by the second evening. Poor mad fool.

Continue reading "England's 'good cricket' makes failure worse"

	John Warr © The Cricketer International

When twenty-three-year-old Cambridge fast bowler John Warr arrived in Sydney with Freddie Brown’s MCC side of 1950-51, a Sydney wharf labourer hailed him. ‘Hey Warr, he shouted, ‘you’ve got as much chance of taking a test wicket on this tour as I have of pushing a pound of butter up a parrot's arse with a hot needle.' The labourer was wrong. Warr took exactly one, for 281 runs. Mind you, it was a close run thing: the umpire looked like giving Ian Johnson not out when he nicked to Godfrey Evans at Adelaide Oval, before Johnson decided he could not ignore the pitiable sag of Warr’s shoulders.

Continue reading "Dogs of Warr"

	Hussey: a player rising to meet the challenge of the top level rather than being dragged down by it © Getty Images

The worst thing about Michael Hussey is his nickname. Mr Cricket. A cricketer keen on cricket: who’d a thunk it? It would be worth remarking were he Mr Stamps, or Mr Fossils. But Mr Cricket? Gimme a break. Almost everything else about him, however, is designed to please the purist. His technique is as simple as simple as a join-the-dots puzzle, as hard to break as Enigma. He performs the basics, of manipulating strike and running between wickets, with alacrity. He gives off an air of such pent-up enthusiasm about playing for Australia that it is as though he has been let in on an exciting secret he is bursting to share. And no wonder: his Test average of 77.4 is still to converge with his first-class average of 53.9. Here is a player rising to meet the challenge of the top level rather than being dragged down by it. You could call him the anti-Hick.

Continue reading "The Anti-Hick"

	Two can play at boredom © Cricinfo Ltd

Leg-theory in Adelaide almost triggered a riot seventy-three years ago. Today it brought a Test match almost to a standstill. You’d have gotten tasty odds before this game on the likelihood of the first English double hundred since Walter Hammond, or of England setting a new Ashes partnership record at this ground. But not perhaps as enticing as those on Shane Warne auditioning for the role of Australian wheelie-bin, with over upon over outside leg stump, not in search of rough, but of respite.

On the day that 'The Australian's trenchant Malcolm Conn announced that England had ‘unveiled its latest secret weapon to retain the Ashes – boredom’, Australia demonstrated that it is a game two can play. It is fair to say that England had the better of the détente that ensued. It isn't unfair to say that, although a draw looms as the likeliest outcome, and Australia has the batting to kill the game off, only one side can win this game: odds on that team being England would only two days ago have been astronomical.

Continue reading "Whose line is it anyway?"

	Panesar superstar © Getty Images

The Shot That Echoed Round the World: You’d have sworn Monty Panesar was preparing himself for a triumphant return to the colours. He was on the arena before play undertaking a solo fielding routine – with disarming athleticism, what’s more. Word that he had not made the XI reached our overflow eyrie at about 9.30am, when the phone of my Guardian colleague Lawrence Booth delivered itself of a text message from his fiancée in England: ‘I can’t believe they haven’t picked Monty.’ Lawrence harrumphed: ‘How come she knows and we don’t? She’s in Cambridge. And she doesn’t even like cricket.’

The Song That Echoed In My Ears: Cricket Australia may have barred Barmy bugler Billy Cooper from the Test, but what will they do about the manglings of ‘God Save The Queen’ by their chanteuse of choice Amy Pearson, who insists on wringing the Britain’s anthem for bathos, as though she’s belting out ‘The Greatest Love of All’? Heaven knows, it’s probably the B-side for her disco version of ‘Amazing Grace’. But can someone please tell her that it’s an anthem, not a torch song?

Continue reading "Postcards from Adelaide Oval"

	A little bit of home © Getty Images

Adelaide Oval is routinely, if not rather unimaginatively, considered the most picturesque of Australian cricket grounds. Indeed, it takes that status rather for granted, and like a self-regarding beauty queen has been rather letting itself go these past few years. The Eastern Stand has damn all to recommend it; the profusion of canopies apparently inspired by Jean Paul Gaultier’s famous bra – think Madonna, on her ‘Blonde Ambition’ tour - don’t do much for the eye either. At least, though, the ground is not hemmed in by the skyscraper stands so popular elsewhere. Its communal benches and grassy verges defy the trend to one-bum, one-seat tyranny, while the 1912-vintage scoreboard provides a pleasing sense of continuity. Cricket in Adelaide, too, will always sound enchanting on radio: with bowlers operating from either the River or the Cathedral Ends, you could almost be listening to a broadcast from England.

In all, it is a ground on a scale and of a character a little more congenial to English visitors. There is something for Andrew Flintoff’s team to build on here, too, even if the conjecture about Glenn McGrath’s injury seemed like something calculated to help the Barmy Army’s morale, rather than seriously to incommode Australia. They had the better of the game against South Australia. The pitch will probably not deteriorate fast enough to deviate significantly for Warne: benign weather in the mid-20s is expected. We’ve even had a little rain, which briefly rinsed the outfield yesterday, the ground staff hastening to protect the pitch and the sponsors’ symbols on the outfield – fortunately in that order.

So, with a favouring breeze and a ration of good fortune, England could work their way back into the series here tomorrow. The toss may not even be quite so loaded as it was in Brisbane. The team batting second has led at half-way in three of the last six Tests, and Australia lost here three years ago despite making 556 in their first innings, 400 of them on the first day. The alternative? If England lose in Adelaide, at least Michael Vaughan can stop worrying about a comeback to Test cricket in this series. There won’t be any point.

	So much talent; so little pleasure © Getty Images

Back in Melbourne for a day, I’m shortly to heft my gear and head for training at the Yarras. Nothing, I find, makes you keener for cricket yourself than a few days watching it. This is actually the first summer I’ve forsaken the pleasure of my weekend game in order to cover a Test series. I even had misgivings about covering the Ashes of 2005, because of the dent it would leave in my pre-season - a period of the year I always love, when hope has not yet been dashed against the rocks of experience.

I can usually justify watching good cricket by what I learn from it. In Brisbane, I was positioned in the media overspill upstairs, at 45 degrees to the action: a superior vantage from which to admire the degree to which Shane Warne varies his speeds and trajectories, and to watch how far forward Kevin Pietersen stretched in playing him. In general, I always come away from watching top-class batsmen resolved to take a longer front foot stride, and bend my front leg more – which, of course, I immediately forget. I also noticed at the Gabba a little ritual of Matthew Hayden’s after letting the ball go, moving rhythmically back and forward from his final position, testing the balance and security of the platform erected by his footwork. Someone at training tonight will probably wonder aloud why I’m doing the Nutbush.

Yet, notwithstanding that I’m in the twilight of a mediocre career, I’d never gratuitously run down the game the Yarras play. We enjoy our cricket – a quality conspicuously lacking from England’s tour so far. For a weekend cricketer who gets by on the occasional glimpse the possible, a spectacle like Steve Harmison’s travails on the first day at Gabba is always poignant. We might bowl that way because we can’t help it; he can. So much ability, so little pleasure.

Australian players in general are far better at preserving the spark of fun in their cricket. A pioneer in this respect, I think, was Mark Taylor. I recall a press conference at the end of the Perth Test in February 1995. Amid much sapient and sympathetic nodding, Mike Atherton had lamented the glutted cricket calendar, saying it made for weary players and lower standards. When the proposition that too much international cricket being played was put to his Australian counterpart, Taylor replied, with that distinctive upward inflexion: ‘No. And I think I speak for all the blokes. I love Test cricket.’ The answer impressed me: I wasn’t surprised when they went on to beard the joyless West Indians in their den. Indeed, I've never heard a captain, before or since, and with such sincerity, use the word ‘enjoy’ when talking about cricket.

Although I’m missing a bit of cricket this summer, I don’t entirely lose the community of my club, for the Yarras have a sizeable diaspora. While in Brisbane, I caught up with Em, Big Al, Churchyard, Sis and Knockbax; in Adelaide, I’m looking forward to the company of Bloodbath. The Yarras might not be the biggest, strongest or richest cricket club going around - but by golly we care about nicknames. In this respect, JL, Haydos, Punter, Marto etc also have nothing to teach us.

	Ricky Ponting caught in the act © Getty Images

A common cry is that professionalism has turned our cricketers into mere automata, similar in many more respects than they are different. Cricket Australia’s compendious media guide provides some empirical support for the complaint, having surveyed each of the country’s first-class players of their heroes, philosophies, recreations, and favourite dishes. If it wasn’t for barbecues, it soon emerges, many Australian cricketers would surely starve.

Yet perhaps the most revelatory dimension of the questionaire involves bad habits, where Australian cricketers reveal themselves as almost abjectly inoffensive. Some are lazy. Some are messy. Justin Langer may leave wet towels on the bathroom floor. His wife tells him he does; he apparently remains unconvinced. Political correctness has made inroads. Metrosexual South Australian rookie Lachlan Oswald-Jacobs chides himself for failing to lift the toilet seat; cerebral New South Welshman Greg Mail confesses to ‘studying maths’. Doesn’t anyone smoke, or drink, or shag any more? Shane Jurgensen owns up to ‘annoying my wife’; the alternative of annoying other people’s wives would surely be far more interesting. While on the subject of wives, Shane Warne’s worst habit is ‘losing things’.

Continue reading "What times! What habits!"

	Rain here was always a phantom of English, and cricketing, imagination © Getty Images

Text messages began arriving from friends in England about 6am. Could I stick my hand out the window and check for raindrops? Alas, the curtains parted to reveal a cloudless sky. Weather in Queensland doesn’t have the famous consistency of that experienced in the Pennines, but rain here was always a phantom of English imagination, based more on the electrical storm that curtailed a one-sided Ashes Test eight years ago than on instinctive feeling for local meteorology.

Trusting in the efficacy of a timely rain these days, too, is a little like believing in the Cottingley Fairies. Rain seldom exerts the influence on Tests as of yore. Games unfold so speedily, and so frequently involve mismatches, that even a lost day is insufficient to make avert the inevitable. The last Test verifiably ruined by rain was the knife-edge contest between Australia and India at Chennai just over two years ago. It wasn’t rain that held Australia up at the Oval in 2005 but bad light, thanks to the fixture’s lateness in the summer. Mind you, ‘Is It Cowardly to Pray for Bad Light?’ (2005) wouldn’t have made such an apt title for Rob Smyth’s delicious book.

Continue reading "It never rains..."

	Police have been administering the Killjoy Act with the help of CCTV © Getty Images

Great concern this summer attended the arrival of the Barmy Army, whose songs, chants and general bonhomie, it was feared, would drown out Australian fans, and render Tests inhospitable – or, at least, interfere with time-honoured parochialism and partisanship which Aussies regard as the natural state of things.

In fact, both the Army and their antipodean rivals have here been kept well and truly under a pretty coarse thumb by the police, administering the Killjoy Act with the help of CCTV. Only Pat Buchanan is more hostile to the Mexican wave than the potentates of the Gabba. Yet Cricket Australia is poorly placed to be pointing the finger at anyone – it is looming as a far more exasperating noise polluter than any group of fans.

Continue reading "Time for a Commercial Break"

	'Ponting's four-man attack have a lot of hard yakka ahead – well, some anyway' © Getty Images

The Ashes embodies cricket’s most traditional format: five five-day Tests played in white by daylight. Yet this has been fitted into a decidedly untraditional tour, the most anticipated series of modern times being shoehorned into six weeks, beginning with an unprecedented double header.

For the most part, this has been England’s problem, with only three second-class practice matches to prepare for back-to-back Tests - rather like trying to soup up a Go Kart to compete at the drag racing strip with the addition of some GT stripes. At the Gabba today, it became Australia’s, blessed with a first-innings lead of 445, but burdened with the choice of whether to enforce the follow-on.

Continue reading "Leading Exponents"

‘Shoddyline’. ‘Wide They Bother’. England’s woeful direction has already been a cause for rejoicing among tabloid headline writers. But the Gabba Test is also beginning to look a little like a tale of two lengths: England’s too predictably short, Australia’s suitably generous.

This was especially obvious in the afternoon, as Australia’s tail failed to expire of its own accord, the last three wickets spacing themselves over 133 runs. Glenn McGrath’s batting doesn’t usually tell a lengthy tale, but one ball in Steve Harmison’s 29th over yesterday told at least a little one. So predictable had Harmison’s intent become that Australia’s last man slid into position to play a hook before the ball was bowled; he shovelled it, inelegantly but effectively, to fine leg for a single.

Continue reading "A Tale of Two Lengths"

Sometimes you arrive at a cricket ground wondering if the day’s play will offer anything worth writing about; other days you are greeted by decision like the omission of Monty Panesar from England’s XI and there’s scarcely need to see a ball. Of course, you could see it coming a mile off, Duncan Fletcher’s three weeks of purse-mouthed pragmatism having softened watchers up. Yet it was somehow still a shock to be handed the England team sheet today: not quite a suicide note to rank with the 1983 Labour manifesto, but a failure of nerve and imagination.

Continue reading "One-Man Bureaucracy"

	Matthew Hayden describes the Gabba pitch as ‘your best friend one day and your worst enemy the next’ © Getty Images

It was Ian Rush who said that he could never get used to playing football in Italy; it was like living in a foreign country. Something similar applies to playing cricket in Australia. The surroundings are reassuringly Anglophone, from the right-hand-drive cars to the voice on the speaking clock. But appearances can be deceptive.

Traditionally, Australia in Ashes cricket have enjoyed far greater advantage from their conditions than England have from theirs. Australia won 46 and lost 43 Ashes Tests in England, but their lead at home stretches 80 to 54 – empirical attestation of Len Hutton’s advice that a touring team must be 25% better than Australia to beat them in their own backyard.

On the eve of a series in which England seek to parallel Hutton's feat of retaining the Ashes, the challenge to the English cricketer coming here is worth articulating. Firstly, he finds that that the ball bounces higher and carries further, while also requiring more art to move sideways, encouraging shorter lengths and more cross-bat strokeplay.

Continue reading "Australia...you're standing in it"

	'Professionalism tends to further fuse man and sport, to the point where failure does seem like a personal reflection' © Getty Images

One of the surprising features of Trescothick’s travails is that they should have befallen so consummate a professional. English cricket has had its Tufnells and Lewises, its Hicks and Corks; but Trescothick’s game has been so steady, his technique so economical, his manner so unflappable. Perhaps, though, therein lay the dilemma, that he undertook to tour because there seemed no professional alternative open, as Thorpe confessed became his own default setting: ‘I kept playing because I felt it would help me keep a grip on things. What else was I supposed to do?’

Continue reading "The Sorrows of Young Marcus"