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?

Ranji, sleeves buttoned to the wrist, signs a square cut with a little extra wristy flourish; Fry, brim of his sun hat tilted rakish upwards, moves as stiffly as a tin soldier. Alas, whomever out of shot was doing the bowling was not exactly landing it on a sixpence. Ranji gets two full tosses, and has no chance to show off his trademark glance; Fry flashes the errant bowler a severe look when he receives a wide one he cannot reach. Then it’s on to the battleship’s salvoes: reels being expensive, there was no chance to go back for more.

When Shane Warne and Glenn McGrath take the field in their final Test on Tuesday, how lucky we will be. Every ball, every moment, every tiny musing will be accessible and retrievable, in real time and replay. How much has it enhanced our appreciation of these two giants of the game that we have been able to study them through television and its evolving technologies?

I’ll never forget the first time, on Australia’s 1995 tour of the West Indies, that I saw Warne bowl in what they used to call Spin Vision, but which they no longer bother to name because it is so commonplace. Or indeed on Sunset & Vine’s ARRI Tornado super slo-mo camera last year, his fingers undulating like piano keys as they set the ball rotating. We’ll remember McGrath, too, for the exquisite straightness of that back-spinning seam as the ball went on its way. We are a sports consuming generation that tends to takes its blessings for granted. A hundred years ago, when the Kinora was the best thing going, you took your chances.

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.

Eighty-eight Foresters have played for and thirty-three have captained their country, including Douglas Jardine, Gubby Allen and Colin Cowdrey, even if this is now more a vestige of the Gentleman/Players distinction: star player on this sojourn is Cambridge blue 'Nutter', who made a stroke-filled 114 yesterday, before his father-in-law Phil the Farmer came in to save the day with a forward prod or two.

Australia does not have a wandering club tradition, believing in associations, grades, fixture lists and home grounds, although that’s a historical and geographical outcome rather than a deep cultural aversion: when club cricket was organizing in the twenty-five years or so before the First World War, Australia was a pretty hard country to wander round. With travel cheaper and people more prosperous, that could change: Perth-based Forester Jerome Griffin is in the process of setting up an antipodean chapter of the club.

By all accounts, too, the touring party of players, wives, kids and friends have had more pleasure from Australia than Freddie’s ‘fantastic blend’, from youthful Joe the Teacher, who wore his Foresters tie for the duration of the flight from England, to elder statemen John the Slip and Jeremy the Veteran, apparently locked in intense rivalry over the number and variety of injuries they can sustain. They had just come from playing in my hometown, Geelong, and were full of praise for Darren Hauenstein and the South Barwon CC: ‘a great bunch of young guys who were everything good about club cricket’. The VTCA turned on an excellent afternoon tea – of a quality, it must be conceded, seldom seen in the association itself (albeit strangely devoid of that traditional Australian delicacy, the Barbecue Shape).

The ghost at the feast was Flintoff, whose team this season have so bitterly disappointed English hopes. Many heads were shaken, many chagrined words muttered. Free Foresters represent a love of cricket strong enough to travel long distances at considerable expense to unfamiliar grounds and an uncertain welcome; what do the rich and pampered England cricket team represent?

At his last press conference, Flintoff referred to the steadfastness of the Barmy Army, still singing, still chanting, still cheering despite all that has befallen his team: an endearing phenomenon, it is true, but a deluding one. English people, it is true, don’t necessarily scorn a beaten team; this, however, has been the kind of tour when one could very easily grow completely fed up with English cricket. What will it take to get through to England’s captain, their coach and hierarchy, how badly they have let their supporters down this summer?

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.

Both Warne and Murali, of course, are slow bowlers: hard yakka at the best of times. ‘Bowling spin can be a lonely business,’ Warne observes in his new book. ‘A lot of the time you are the only spinner in the team.’ That being so, however, where a seam bowler on an overcast day or faced with a lush wicket might have to split the overs three ways, a spinner usually faces little competition for overs when conditions are favourable. So while we’ll probably continue fetishising the new ball, it’s likely that our major long-distance wicket takers will be those who use the old.

Some commenters objected to this blog’s criticisms of Rudi Koertzen during the Perth Test. Mind you, when you’ve been branded an English sycophant and an Australian jingoist, you tend to take comments with a grain of salt; nor did Koertzen do much today to quiet my mind. By my reckoning, he rejected five good lbw shouts: Collingwood when he was 0 and 6, to Clark; Panesar when he was 4, to Warne; Hayden when he was 6 and 9, to Hoggard. Worse, he was not consistent. Having added a foot to the height of the stumps in Perth, he seemed here to have shrunk them by a foot. To say that ‘umpires are only human’ is a fatuity: so are cricketers, and they are understood to pass in and out of form, and be subject to promotion and demotion. Koertzen is, to me, out of form as an umpire.

Let us, though, be constructive. How do umpires practice? How do umpires find their form? We’re apt to complain that international players are expected to produce their best at the drop of a helmet. But what about our decision makers? Once an official joins the Elite Panel, he leaves first-class umpiring behind, which countries protect for the encouragement of their own domestic officials. There is no opportunity to rehearse one’s skills in a less fraught environment; no chance to test one’s concentration over standard days' play. Is it possible, then, that the process devised to eliminate the impression of bias in umpiring has had the effect of corroding competence?

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.

It’s not that long since I watched McGrath use the Lord’s slope to rout England in the last Ashes series. An electron microscope could not have submitted the batsmen’s techniques to closer examination. Yet, since that Test, his figures have been 47 wickets at 28.14: respectable, but a falling off from his stellar standards. At times this summer he has genuinely laboured. At Adelaide he was comfortably the least of the Australian bowlers, denouncing the pitch as ‘ridiculous’, even though others made an impact where he did not. There is an argument, moreover, that Stuart Clark might be more effective still with unquestioned custody of the new ball, which he used adeptly in South Africa. Which raises the question: how effective would McGrath be without it?

In all, though, what a wonderful bowler. And, from everything I have observed of him off the field, what a decent man. About seven years ago, Wisden Australia, of which I was then editor, anointed him International Cricketer of the Year, and hosted him at a lunch in Brisbane. Quite prepared to take an altogether unreasonable dislike to him, I found McGrath improbably but naturally modest, and extremely perceptive about cricket in general, rather than simply about 'putting it in the right areas' and 'bowling in the corridor'. Funny, too: even now, nobody gives a more drolly self-deprecating press conference.

Oddly, perhaps, I’d also like to salute his batting. The sight of McGrath with a bat used to be as incongruous as an obese smoker in lycra: the impedimenta just seemed completely superfluous. But he worked his way to being a capable tailender – probably as good a number 11 as any in the world - and that old reputation became a subtle advantage. If McGrath kept a fielding team waiting even a few overs for his wicket, you could sense the irritation and frustration intensifying. ‘Can’t get McGrath out? Wassamatter with ya?’ In last year’s Boxing Day Test, he drove South Africa to distraction, keeping Michael Hussey company from 50 to a brilliant 100. Having started his career as Australia’s batting postscript, he became the sting in its 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.

Warne was mandated by nature to bowl slow. He has a surprisingly gentle handshake, but you can feel the strength in those big fingers. He has broad shoulders and a powerful back leg drive, so that he almost body surfs into his delivery: the contrast is MacGill who does most of his work with his arm. And that action – so simple, so grooved, so efficient. It is nothing other than a miracle of coordination.

Above all, perhaps, is the mentality: that fast bowler's aggression in a slow bowler's skin. All the Warne books in my library seem to feature a cover shot of him appealing. If you knew no better, you'd think they were the work of a bowler who tried to bust open people's heads for a living. He only threatened eardrums.

What a combination. If you doubt this, check the landscape. It’s often stated that Warne made every kid in Australia want to bowl leggers. Warne says in ‘My Illustrated Career’: ‘My biggest contribution has been to make slow bowling exciting and even fashionable.’ But MacGill is still the second-best leg spinner in Australia, and Cameron White and Cullen Bailey do not a renaissance make. It might be exciting. It might be fashionable. But it’s no easier.

More over at Guardian Unlimited, if you're interested.

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.

‘What keeps Warne going? This summer, it’s probable he will pass 1000 international wickets: he has 978, composed of 685 from 140 Tests and 293 from 194 limited-overs games. But his great rival for bowling’s blue riband, Muttiah Muralitharan, already has 1082, and with his edge in years will probably leave Warne’s records in his wake in due course. The Australian captaincy, too, is now, almost certainly, permanently out of reach.

‘The Ashes, then, looms disproportionately large in Warne’s plans – for, after that, even he probably does not know. Cricket has been a faithful recourse for Warne; when all else has gone pear-shaped, the game has always been there for him. But Warne, who grew up in the bosom of a loving home and family, might well be prepared to make sacrifices for one of his own. Perhaps, in due course, Warne will have a shock for us that is genuine and meaningful.’

I’ve written a lot about Warne this summer, mainly because I’ve had the sense that I should enjoy him while I can. Have just sent off a column to the Guardian about Warne, and also McGrath. More when the announcement is made official.

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.

I remember the first inkling I had of it. In England last year, I had been taken aback by how casual the Aussies’ net sessions seemed to be. Then, during the ICC Super Series one-dayers at Docklands, the Australians began coming out during the intervals and doing seriously sharp fielding routines, severely showing up the Fred Karno’s Army of the World XI. I’ve felt that note of intent and intensity in their cricket since. Having not seen England between times, I’ve been taken aback by the slippage in their standards. As in 2005, the trophy was won by the team that wanted it more, and that planned, selected and executed accordingly. No real cricket fan can be other than satisfied with that.

I’ve written about the contrast in preparation for tomorrow’s Guardian, so I won’t say more here. Having been toasted on the front and frozen on the back for five days, furthermore, I’ve buggered my neck and need some physio, so I’ll save further musings for after the three-hour flight to Melbourne - which I’m now really looking forward to! As I write this, Michael Hussey is in the middle of the ground sharing beers and posing for photos with the WACA support staff. Nice bloke. Feel free to lavish praise on him and others.

	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.

Warne simply never lets a ball go without expecting a wicket. When some do not, he is obstupefied. He reminds me of a story that John Rutherford told me about that ornery all-rounder Cec Pepper, who some will know as a pioneer of the flipper.

Pepper was bowling one day to Frank Worrell, and released a delivery with a cry of: ‘That’s it!’ It was: Worrell was bowled. When team-mates gathered excitedly round Pepper and asked about the ejaculation, he explained simply: ‘As soon as I let it go, I knew there wasn’t a man alive who could play that ball.’

At the press conference after yesterday’s plan, Glenn McGrath paid Warne pointed treatment: his late wickets were Warne's as much as his own. Standing at the back of the presser as I usually do, I also saw a nice moment as Cook left, McGrath entered and most of the crowd were fussing over their tape recorders. As they passed, McGrath shook Cook’s hand warmly: ‘Well batted. Great effort.’ It could have been two blokes from rival clubs after a Saturday game; the Australians' magnanimity where opponents are concerned is one of their most endearing qualities.

Maybe I should have asked McGrath what he thinks of Rudi Koertzen, seeing he was another batsman who received a distinctly speculative decision from him on the first day. Or Michael Clarke whom he fired at Lord’s, and at Sydney during the Super Test. Or...well, I could go on. Just so we’re clear: there’s nothing partisan in my low opinion of Koertzen’s umpiring. Nor am I rushing to judgement. Yes, umpires do make mistakes: replays showed that Steve Bucknor sawed Strauss off in Adelaide, but Bucknor's umpiring this summer has otherwise been excellent so criticism would be unwarranted. Umpires, though, are also open to criticism. The whole idea of the ICC Elite Panel is that some umpires are better than others. How else are we to know this than by critical evaluation of their performances? For the record, I think the best umpires in the world at the moment are Mark Benson and Simon Taufel. What a shame neither will umpire an Ashes Test.

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?

As for the Strauss lbw, I don't think it's material to say that it 'looked out' on TV. The effect of the elevated view of the TV cameras, which inevitably distorts height, is most pronounced where lbw is concerned. It is a truth universally acknowledged that this Perth pitch is a bouncy one: any umpire, therefore, should have at the back of his mind that balls short of a length, unless they very obviously stay down, will tend to pass over the stumps more often than not. Aleem Dar did, quite rightly, when he gave Hayden not out yesterday on 65 (he gave a poor decision against Katich at Trent Bridge last year, which may have made him more circumspect). Koertzen did not (if he thinks about much, he hides it well). And this was not even close: the ball hit above the knee roll, and was shown to be passing over the stumps by a foot and a half. To be fair, it can sometimes be difficult to pick up the height of an impact on a white-clad batsman. My own view is that umpires should more often consult with their square leg colleagues, generally better placed to give altitude guidance. But that may be easier said than done. I'd welcome comments from umpire readers.

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.

Australia, meanwhile, showed all the application that had eluded them, and then England, on the first two days of the match. Michael Hussey and Michael Clarke added 151 at five an over without attempting anything extravagant. England toiled – how they toiled! Yet this was staving off of the inevitable. At times, the play resembled the middle overs of a one-day match; then, in the last hour, it swung violently towards Twenty20 territory.

That was when Adam Gilchrist got going. Perhaps he is not the greatest wicketkeeper batsman in history - but surely no player in history has been better suited to the task of batting when his team is 400 ahead, it is 100 in the shade, and a 70m leg-side boundary beckons with a brisk wind to hit with. This was hitting of the highest quality and orthodoxy: there was nothing ugly, lusty or even particularly violent about it.

The day might have been different – slightly different – with a slightly different apportionment of luck in the first session. After disposing of Ponting, Harmison had a healthy lbw shout against Hayden (65), turned down by Aleem Dar: perhaps the chip of a bail too high, and probably a good decision. Panesar issued a piercing cry for a bat-pad catch against Hussey (15), turned down by Rudi Koertzen: another poor decision from an umpire who is simply not right often enough, having already done for Strauss once in the game and later to do him in again. When Hayden’s Kingaroy cut worked its way to deep fine leg for four, bowler Hoggard pressed a wrist band to his woebegone head like the character in a melodrama who had just been told of the bank’s foreclosure.

Panesar, in fact, was more patient than the Queenslander, eager to help down his lunch with a hundred, but who was foiled by a combination of loop, bounce and deviation. Hayden stripped his gloves off angrily, and one feared for his bat in the privacy of the dressing room; this was a wicket as deserved as any of Panesar’s in the first innings. Thereafter, however, Michael Hussey and Michael Clarke ensured that it was all one-way traffic, with a skillfully-constructed stand, and Flintoff’s imagination narrowed. Sajid Mahmood looked as short of his captain’s confidence as Shaun Tait at the Oval in 2005, bowling only two of the first 73 overs of the innings. With his ratio of seventeen Test overs this summer to six exclusive Guardian columns, Mahmood’s first wicket will probably justify a book.

Ponting set England 557: another reckless declaration! He set them 648 at Brisbane – not quite the 735 that buccaneering Bill Lawry set West Indies at Sydney in February 1969, but close. Here, though, the closure was ideally timed, at the moment of greatest psychological ascendancy, and Andrew Strauss fetched his third consecutive umpiring blunder: he must have exhausted his quota of luck for the tour by bagging a taxi in Perth. The end was close, but this brought it still closer.

	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.

The wicket-taking party is cricket’s version of the rave: lots of unrestrained and frenetic activity in which it is hard to completely join. What happens on the other side of the boundary is connected in the event but not in the spirit. Panesar somehow unites the two occasions, behaving as we perhaps might ourselves. No sooner had he taken his first wicket on the first day than the Barmy Army was indulging in its choreographed ‘Monty Dance’, involving a lot of leaping and high-fiving. They kept it up – like most things they do – all day and with blissful abandon.

Panesar’s priceless quality, in a cricket world full of ‘going to work’ and ‘hard days at the office’, is innocence. He gives as dull a press conference as anyone – they’re always coming out well, but they have to land in the right areas – but on the field hides nothing. A couple of months ago, Graeme Smith warned that Panesar would face ‘an unbelievable amount of abuse’ from Australian crowds, some of which might be racist. It provided a headline for a day, but always seemed more a reflection of Smith’s flair for provocation than anything else. He was welcomed to the wicket today with a universal cheer, redoubled when he connected solidly with his first defensive shot. After his full-blooded sweep for four from Warne, the roar shook the temporary seating. After his straight-driven boundary from Clark, one half expected swooning females to shower the field in panties.

Likewise the lamentations and jeremiads about Panesar’s capture by English celebrity culture – as well meant as they might be – seem premature. In his book Late Innings (1982), the New Yorker’s baseball writer Roger Angell committed to print some sentiments that are worth calling to mind, from time to time, in the context of modern professional sport: ‘It is true that the smallest flutter of a spontaneous incident – in sports, or anywhere else in public life in this country – is now seized upon and transformed at once into a mass-produced imitation or a slogan or an advertising gimmick…It is dispiriting but we can’t let ourselves miss the moment of humour and exultation when it does come along, or deny its pleasure.’

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.

Moment of the Day: For all the fun and frolic of plucky Panesar, the day’s decisive twist was the fall of Ricky Ponting. ‘He’s Out’ announced the newspaper posters when Bradman’s wicket fell; Ponting now needs as little introduction. The effect on England was like a pinch of snuff. It also underlined just how crucial was Giles’s drop at Adelaide – if it needed underlining.

Unsolicited advice of the day: ‘Why don’t you ring Michael Vaughan and ask him?!’ Anonymous Aussie fan in the Lillee-Marsh Stand as Andrew Flintoff indulged in lots of arm waving with Steve Harmison.

Time Shift: Thanks to WA’s adoption of daylight saving on 3 December, start time for Perth Tests is now 11.30am: a step back to the genteel days when Aussie Tests started at noon ahead of five-hour days, and another deviation from the standard 11am commencement (Brisbane, of course, has always kicked off at 10am, to accommodate the abrupt tropical nightfall). If this were a club ground, you would be playing a game of juniors in the morning. As it is not, nothing impedes the promenading of ex-players and media big-wigs on the square in search of reflected glory that is such a familiar spectacle of the modern Test.

Press Release: ’I am freezing cold, my chair keeps collapsing, the queues to the lavatory are enormous, and all the biscuits have gone’: thus, one of my normally stoical colleagues early in the afternoon. The first complaint was incontrovertible: I have been in warmer morgues. Because it is needed to cool the function room from which the media area has been cordoned off, the air conditioner is blowing like a Fremantle Doctor direct from the Arctic. A widescreen television has been installed, but is tuned to a grainy black-and-white image of the scoreboard, at which one keeps gazing because of the apparent likelihood that the camera will cut away to show Brian Luckhurst cover driving.

For some reason, too, the radio broadcast kept us company in the first session, so we know that the ABC’s air conditioner was supplying Kerry O’Keeffe with nitrous oxide; he guffawed and wheezed his way through the tensest hour of the series. Someone please put him out of my misery.

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.

The name WACA also conveys something else, referring to both association and ground. Owning its own ground has been both a blessing and imposition for the WACA. It has had a valuable asset against which to secure borrowings, and survived the Great Depression by flogging off the adjacent land for a trotting track. The challenges of providing for the arena’s upkeep now, however, are acute: the WACA looks, frankly, shabby. The fifty-year-old scoreboard is not ancient enough to be historic and not charming enough to be venerable; the twenty-year-old lights, like vertical concrete spatulas, are simply ugly; the temporary seating looks it. Yet nothing much savours of tradition here. A majestic new cast of Lillee, WA’s favourite son and now the chairman of the association, is to be unveiled on 22 December – but outside the MCG, rather than his home sod.

Fortunately, there is a big difference between an empty and a full cricket ground, and Western Australians seem determined to enjoy themselves. Perth has been declared ‘Cricket City’ for ten days including the Test – a tribute to Michael Hussey, no doubt. He, Justin Langer and Adam Gilchrist provide the local content for fans. If Australia win it will be the first time the Ashes have been regained on this ground, and Ricky Ponting may be due to have a whole suburb named for him.

	'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.

The reaction has been three cheers at the ICC, and a more circumspect two most places else. The quantum of money washing around cricket is unprecedented and unforseen; its effect is therefore unimaginable. Money makes people do strange things. As Ringo Starr said when asked to explain the making of that notorious turkey The Magic Christian: ‘People will swim through shit for a dollar.’ All eyes will be on how the ICC carves up its bounty – or, at least, they should be. The council now calls to mind Bill Clinton’s finely-honed description of Major League Baseball during its last lockout: ‘Just a few hundred folks trying to figure out how to divide nearly $2 billion’.

For me, the big question was never how much cricket could raise, but why it was raising it. The answer appears to be: because it can. Here is India’s IS Bindra: ‘Much of the money that comes from this deal can be ploughed back into the development of the game and that will strengthen cricket even more.’ Here is the West Indies Ken Gordon: ‘This agreement...will put the ICC in an extremely strong financial position and allow us all to develop cricket on a much wider front.’ Here is HRH Tunku Imran, President of the Malaysian Cricket Association: ‘The revenue received by the ICC can be used for a new era of development as it will have an impact on all of our 87 Members below Test level..’ So, we’re all going to be developing our fingers to the bone. Glad that’s settled.

But how much ‘ploughing back’ is there really? What width ‘wider front’ are we talking? And how much should junior countries be benefiting anyway when only India, Australia and England among the Test nations operate profitably? What kind of development? Where? By whom? What about the players? The umpires? The administrators? And how accountable and equitable are those who distribute and spend the money that the game raises? After all, what do we have to show for the developing we’re already meant to have done? In the last twenty years, the ICC has promoted two nations to Test status: one is a basket case; the other, the odd exception notwithstanding, can so far only beat that basket case. Now that ESPN and Star are on the hook, it is time to start asking: Cui bono? And I’m not talking about U2.

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.

Figures were never uppermost when you watched Martyn bat, playing so late that he almost seemed to be procrastinating, although so easefully that he enjoyed less credit for application and more blame for carelessness than most. Journalists harped on his cheap dismissal under pressure in the Sydney Test against South Africa in January 1994, although what really held him back was that he didn’t break 50 in 21 first-class innings after being busted to Sheffield Shield ranks. He did not return from the wilderness a better player, but he was certainly more conspicuously dedicated, having partaken of that philosophy of Stuart MacGill’s: ‘When in Rome, do as Steve Waugh.’ No Australian batsman in his time was easier on the eye; noone had lovelier trademark stroke than his back foot drive through the covers. But having learned that talent could only take one so far, I suspect he understood better than most the difference between subsisting on ability and genuine body-and-soul conviction.

About fourteen months ago when a sport magazine asked me to name an Australian team for the Ashes series of 2006-7, I included Adam Voges simply for the sake of a new name. I should be modest about my powers of prescience: I expected great things of Simon Katich too. Martyn’s retirement also provides another opportunity for Andrew Symonds, and further opportunity for Michael Hussey, whom it now seems sensible to promote to number four, and for whom billion per cent dedication is merely a preliminary bid.

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.

Those who’ve read 'The Vincibles' will also know that AB died in May 2001 in an accident, driving the car he once said contained just enough room for a blonde and his cricket gear. He was 31. Few of our boys had experienced death before, and none of us were left unchanged. The back of the club cap is embroidered with ‘AB 1969-2001’. We still play our friends Sacred Heart CC in the annual AB Shield game. AB’s pads remain in the club kit, while his gloves have been handed down to our youngest player. It’s only a few weeks since Ron came to the launch at our clubrooms of a book I’ve written, and I signed copies for Mick and Rich, both of whom are now fathers themselves

AB and I had overlapping literary and musical tastes, and shared lots of books and records. There is a picture of us padded up waiting to bat, apparently oblivious to the game: AB has his nose buried in the essays of Bertrand Russell; I am reading a life of Shostakovich. He also enjoyed a colossal advantage in the round of musical clues at the Yarras trivia nights I hosted, and savoured no cricket achievement so much as one year identifying the opening riffs of ‘Television Screen’ by the Radiators from Space.

Nonetheless, it was with some shock that I received an email a few weeks ago from an old work colleague, who’d bought in a secondhand bookstore a copy bearing my name of ‘It Never Rains’: Peter Roebuck’s bittersweet diary of a county season, which I hold in high esteem. Its provenance was made more mysterious and tantalising by a note signed ‘AB’: could this, she wondered, be from the great Grumpmeister himself? Nothing so exalted. I had lent the book to Anthony and lost track of it, when I guess it was dispersed among his personal effects. When this was explained, she immediately offered me the book back.

So, after its roundabout journey, ‘It Never Rains’ was awaiting me on my return from Adelaide Oval, as was the note, tucked into the rueful chapter called ‘A Duck and a Swipe’, apparently composed just before I went to cover that year’s Ashes series for The Guardian: ‘Gids. Tell Roebuck I have the same trouble laying back to play forceful shots through point & cover, giving catches to the slips and gully. Have a great time mate. Expect to see in the Test side by the 3rd Test. AB.’ I can hear his droll humour, his confidential voice and his low chuckle; I am playing in his old team tomorrow, and feel how much I miss him.

I wonder what he’d make of this Ashes series. Actually I know. England, he would theorise, are not getting enough sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll: more of these were AB’s solution to most things. What a terrible loss - although, also, what a privilege to have known him.

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).

"I was thinking about how you can plan as much as you like and just nothing seems to go right, the conditions appear to be against you, blunting you best hopes. Australia on the first day. So you throw out the plan and do something completely foreign in the hope that someone else will do something for you. A government hand out possibly. So, you bowl round the wicket, outside the leg stump and wait??? Australia on the second day.

"Then you get back to some sort of basics and do want you know has worked in the past. Press on with some dependable tactics. Ponting, Hussey and Clarke on days 3 and 4. Then on the last day you get the luck and the rub of the green that’s been apparently missing for a while. Warne, Lee etc bowling well, decisions going your way and things again turn out OK.

"Therefore, Australia’s farmers, many who have been glued to the cricket as a form of release from the despair of the last few years, can look forward with some hope. We tried our best for a few years with not much happening. We’ve bowled round the wicket and hoped that someone else with make some decisions. We gone back to basics and pressed on regardless for a couple of years and managed to be still in the game somehow.

"Now, maybe next year will be our “last day”, when things go our way again. Some lucky decisions, possibly good old fashioned seasonal conditions to the fore, winding up with a big harvest, good cattle prices and a party at years end that puts many others to shame? Bring on Perth I say!!! So does cricket reflect life or does life reflect cricket?? I only did Ag Science at uni mate, not philosophy!! Keep up the good work Gideon, many people I know enjoy it lots. As a postscript I can hear Guru Bob mumbling in the background about the English having some difficulty in retaining the Ashes back in our lifetime? What do you reckon?"

I'm a Geelong supporter, Tom. Anything is possible.

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.

Part of the problem, I suspect, which I have raised here before, is the nature of modern preparation for Test cricket, which has become increasingly biomechanical in its emphasis, with training dedicated to the reliable reproduction of skills and match situations simulated by drills. Players are so cosseted because of the concern about their international workloads that they play virtually no first-class cricket; coaches tinker with them in the nets as though they are no more than static mechanisms, and Test matches essentially staggered deployments of resources. How many times had Ken Barrington batted out time in first-class cricket before being expected to do it for England? How many times had Andrew Flintoff?

Nothing prepares a player for cricket matches than other cricket matches. Your skills are tested under different scenarios. Your nerve is assessed under pressure. You are accountable to teammates for your performance. Your performance is taken down on your permanent record. These days, it seems, a good many players are helpless without management telling them their ‘role’, and setting their ‘performance benchmarks’. Management has a vested interest in this: it enhances its own importance. So does the player: it enables them to evade responsibility. My favourite quote of the Champions Trophy was Steve Harmison’s response to his omission in the Daily Mail: ‘I don’t quite know why I was dropped yesterday because the management didn’t tell me, but I can only assume it was because I didn’t bowl particularly well in the first two games.’ Perhaps the memo from human resources got lost.

This won’t change, by the way. Economic forces militate against it. Be prepared for more cricketers who can hit a perfect cover drive under no pressure at all, but who fall apart on the first day of series and blame ‘nerves’.

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.

In a podcast before the game, I said that Les Burdett prepared his pitches with a result in mind in the last hour of the last day, and I thought the pitch played pretty fairly throughout: the best bowlers of the first four days, Clark and Hoggard, got the results. So I refrained from writing a ‘these pitches are destroying Test cricket’ piece. Phew.

Mind you, I also expressed the belief that Australia on the fourth day had reverted to a bad habit of indulging individuals at the game’s expense, and dawdled towards the end of their innings, intent on preserving their series lead rather than striving to extend it: an admission of some weakness. I was surprised that Ponting didn’t do more to make England uncomfortable, whether by pushing on more obviously, declaring earlier, or opening the bowling in the second innings with Warne supported by a flock of close-in fielders, perhaps with Clark at the other end. I expected Warne to be a threat on the last day, but didn’t believe he’d been given enough time to do his thing. So I bollocksed that up. Actually, this wasn’t one of those relentlessly efficient Australian wins of yore. Five players contributed next to nothing. The batting is frightfully dependent on Ponting and Hussey. The bowling is still reliant on Warne’s varying humours; McGrath’s spell on Tuesday was embarrassing. But by golly, they trailed that whiff of victory like a bloodhound, a veritable Hound of the Baskervilles.

In one of his famous Roses despatches, Neville Cardus reported wending his way home after a disastrous Yorkshire collapse at Headingley, and being accosted at Leeds railway station by a local eager for the cricket score. Lancastrian Cardus perkily reported that Yorkshire had been rounded up for less than 100 and slumped to heavy defeat. His interlocutor looked grave. After a pause, he said finally: ‘They did that, did they? Ah thowt better of them.’ Well, having seen them play with such spunk and spirit last year, I thought better of England. You always overvalue that which you see with your own eyes. Having not seen England choke in similar circumstances at Multan a year ago, I did not factor it in as a precedent. This leads me to suspect that we’ve all underestimated the significance of Michael Vaughan, behind whose veneer of civility lurks a far steelier individual than Andrew Flintoff. Vaughan would not have trotted out Flintoff’s daft line of reasoning last night, that the match was pretty good for England because they dominated so much of it. England’s good cricket doesn’t redeem its failure; it makes the 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.

This summer, the parrot and butter standard faces another test, from Jimmy Anderson. His figures were one for 280 today when he managed to dismiss Glenn McGrath, and halve his average. The haircut is the same as four years ago; perhaps in recuperating from he stress fractures that kept him out of the last English season, he has lost the whip that gave him pace and away swing. Pitches with bounce but without pace have led him to bowl too short – a costly error. He is in danger of becoming a cipher in this series, if indeed he bowls again. It is a bad sign when a bowler’s presence reminds you of another’s absence, as Anderson’s does Simon Jones with every innocuous over.

Warr famously never had difficulty recalling his Test figures, able to rely on his memory of Hymn #281: ‘Art thou weary, art thou languid/Art thou sore distressed?/
“Come to Me,” saith One/“And coming, Be at rest”.’ Anderson can draw inspiration at the moment of Hymn #140: ‘Great is thy faithfulness.’ He’s going to need it.

	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.

Ricky Ponting did not begin his innings today with his usual fluency. The burden of being the go-to guy in Test after Test may have daunted him momentarily. His pull shot to pick out Ashley Giles was a shot both cavalier and careworn. Any suspicion of lack of control, however, disappeared with Hussey’s arrival, and the resting of England’s first-string bowlers: a fifth bowler is generally a useful adjunct to an attack, but not when that fifth is either Steve Harmison or Jimmy Anderson, with two for 467 between them so far this summer. It is one thing to be a great player, but Hussey is also a great partner.

Ponting was a known quantity for these Ashes. England were aware that they would have to overthrow him to invade the Australian middle order; now Hussey looms as a second bulwark, and England are no closer to working him out than they were a month ago.

	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.

Kevin Pietersen, moreover, has rather transfixed the Australians. It is remarkable how he seems to depopulate a field. Warne confronted him first with two on the fence, behind square leg and at mid-wicket, an exceptionally fine leg, a short mid wicket and a mid on. There was an extra cover sweeper, who was essentially a wasted man, and a mid-off three quarters of the way to the fence, not much more active. It was a plan, of sorts – but not much of one. Pietersen promptly foiled it by finding space between the bowler and mid on, then between the mid-on and short mid-wicket – majestic shots taking him to the brink of his hundred. Warne looked again as he did on Friday, that he would be happy to call it a draw, and settle for a round of golf.

The Australian default setting in such circumstances is usually to stockpile maidens. But from Warne, the leg spinner who has reinvented bowling from round the wicket as an attacking option, the psychological concession of yielding two feet outside leg stump was considerable – like an agreement to drive at 40kmh in a 100kmh zone. It wasn’t a popular strategy: Warne provoked his biggest cheer during the day when he was called for a wide for Rudi Koertzen. Nor was it as economical as Warne would have wished; he was relieved in the afternoon after a spell of 15 wicketless overs for 44. And like many an anti-social activity, it set a bad example on the impressionable young, for Michael Clarke bowled his left-arm darts from over the wicket to no conceivable end.

It was hard not to notice, too, how much more effective Warne was when he resumed bowling over the wicket after Pietersen’s dismissal, having Geraint Jones caught from a casual stroke, and again beating the outside edge. England’s batting in the Ashes of 2005 seemed to involve two different games: one when Warne was involved, one of somewhat lower intensity when he was not. In the Ashes of 2006-7, Pietersen looms as that defining figure. Has there been a taller batsman with daintier footwork? It is almost a rule of cricket that physical size and footwork are in inverse relation, Clive Lloyd and Graeme Pollock being the paradigmatic examples of the big and the still - a tall or heavy man with a long reach, of course, can achieve leverage by a tilt of the body and shift in his weight. But Pietersen’s feet are always going somewhere, usually into harm’s way, and always with positive intent.

Collingwood does his work less obtrusively. Pietersen wants to find out about his game; Collingwood already knows it, back-to-front and inside-out. His 206 was a painstaking innings but never a laboured one. He is a busy cricketer, ticking over like a cab sitting on a rank, eager for fares, ready to zoom off. He is also a valued teammate, to judge from the winding gusto with which Pietersen hugged him as his landmarks were attained.

The Australian attack was willing enough. Lee’s second over of the day was his best of the series, a catalogue of his capabilities, including a rasping riser, a withering yorker and a caught behind appeal of impressive unanimity, with only Bucknor demurring. Correctly, it would seem: sent down to forensics by Channel Nine, the evidence came back without bloodstains or power burns. Even Lee was steadily neutered by the surface. In his 30th over, his fastest bouncer was dashed against the square leg fence by Pietersen, and his slower ball sent skimming through cover by Collingwood. But he did have the energy to offer his hand when Collingwood passed his double hundred, for which he’ll probably get a ticking off from Dennis Lillee.

Stuart Clark has a smidgeon of the stocking-masked hoodlum about him, with his broad nose and close cropped hair, and he took his cosh to Collingwood in a spell of persistent but shrewd short-pitched bowling from the Cathedral End, with a catcher in place at a fine leg gully. Both men had their dander up: Collingwood bided his time, finally found a ball on the line to pull, then blasted the overpitched sequel through covers for four. Again, though, Clark was the pick of the bowlers, finally seeing Collingwood off with a nifty leg cutter, and sparing McGrath a lot of the donkey work that in days gone by would almost certainly have been his. There is a school of thought that the presence of the thrifty will extend McGrath’s career. Mind you, if it means he has to bowl on more pitches like this one, McGrath might not welcome that opportunity.

	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?

Fielder Watch: Michael Hussey hardly touched a ball in the first session, yet covered more miles than anyone, for much of the time traipsing from deep square leg to deep square leg, with a detour to convey the bowler’s cap and glasses to the umpire: a plan, perhaps, to expend some of the kid-drunk-on-red-cordial energy for which Mr Cricket is renowned.

Fielder Watch 2: Had Hussey had been at mid-off in the last over, Kevin Pietersen would have squandered his good work, and wasted much of Paul Colingwood’s. As it was, Glenn McGrath showed his age for the first time this season, and could not quite bridge the distance. On such chances of field placing can whole games hinge.

Attire of the Day: The Observer’s droll columnist Kevin Mitchell, a fine writer and one of the gentlemen of the tour, has been flaunting his Australian upbringing this summer, his guide to Aussie Rhyming Slang a tour de force of either archaeology or imagination. Today his residual Aussieness was put to the test by a SACA jobsworth who insisted that he needed a collar to enter the media area. Kevin emerged from the merchandising tent in a ‘Go Off In Green and Gold’ polo shirt, pulling it off with surprising aplomb. The expenses claim will need explaining, though.

Sign of the Day: Operating instructions in the upright urinals beneath the Favell-Dansie Indoor Cricket Centre. ‘Aim Below. Stop. Think.’ In that order. The first I can understand. The second seems superfluous. The third is the most intriguing of all. Think about what? How deeply? For how long?

‘Mate, are you finished there? I’m busting.’ - ‘I’m sorry, I’m still thinking.’

It reminded me of the sign that Mike Brearley noticed in the dressing room at the SCG, which he describes in The Ashes Retained (1979): ‘Remove clothes before using shower.’ What would be the consequences of not doing so? Brearley wondered. And why would the authority responsible for the sign care?

Hey, they didn’t even score at three runs an over. Waddya want? Cardus?