Things Ain't What They Used To Be: Australia player-by-player

'In transition' is the accepted euphemism for 'not as good as we were' [as England should know, they've been using it long enough]. Yet Australia have been without Warne, McGrath and Langer for almost three years, Gilchrist for nearly two and Hayden since the start of '09. Unsurprisingly, the talent pool doesn't run quite as deep now. So what are they in transition to? 

Simon Katich

341 runs at 42.62, hs 122; 1 x 100, 1 x 50

The Krab laid it down at Cardiff, a man safe in self-knowledge, seemingly set for a series full of the same. Instead he got aggressive, prickly, mad, and started giving it away. Players like Katich succeed in Test cricket on the outer edges of their ability. There's just that much less margin for error.

Out of 10 - 7

Phil Hughes

57 runs at 19.00, hs 36

Fully entitled to ask which other players Australia have bailed on after such a short run of failures. Hughes is a true outlier - he doesn't play like anyone else, so the solution to his problem will come from within. Suggestions he's been worked out don't quite play: he received exactly the same kind of bowling in South Africa and mullered it.

Out of 10 - 3

Shane Watson

240 runs at 48.00, hs 62; 3 x 50

No longer young - he's 28 - no longer, judging by his bowling, an all-rounder, Watson may well have fallen into a barrel of breasts and come out sucking his thumb. He's certainly a sucker for an LBW, and there are no secrets in international cricket. His best hope for a permanent place may be at five, if Clarke moves up in place of Hussey.

Out of 10 - 7

Ricky Ponting

385 runs at 48.12, hs 150; 1 x 100, 2 x 50

Between the 2005 Ashes, when he averaged 39.88, and revenge in 2006-7, when he averaged 82.28, Ponting's series returns went 82.25, 103.00, 58.00 and 95.50. He wanted it - bad. Between the 2006-7 Ashes and this one, his series returns ran 38.28, 53.82,  38.00, 33.33, 47.50 and 35.00. So is he [finally] sated, is he tired, is he on a last, gentle downhill slide? Perhaps defeat will fire him up again: when he's in and set, he looks as good as ever. In 2005, he was culpable as captain, this time less so, and he played the media as beautifully as he batted in the Oval second innings.

Out of 10 - 8

Michael Hussey

276 runs at 34.50, hs 121; 1 x 100, 2 x 50

It's not just England in thrall to the symbolism of '05: Hussey's hundred at the Oval has been compared to Matty Hayden's. Hayden took off on a long last tear afterwards, but Hussey lacks the hubris of Haydos. 

Out of 10 - 5

Michael Clarke

448 runs at 64.00, hs 136; 2 x 100, 2 x 50; 1 wicket at 75.00, bb 1-27

The finest, most timeless batting of the series came from Clarke. At Lord's he could have been batting in any era; you almost expected Keith Miller's spitfire to fly overhead and dip its wings. As an audition for the future of Australian cricket, it passed. Must surely bat four now, and make big hundreds. 

Out of 10 - 9

Marcus North

367 runs at 52.42, hs 125*; 2 x 100, 1 x 50; 4 wickets at 51.00, bb 4-131

Which one is Marcus North again? Oh yeah... Turns unobtrusiveness into an art form, but you can't argue with the runs. 

Out of 10 - 8

Brad Haddin

278 runs at 46.33, hs 121; 1 x 100, 1 x 50

Haddin keeping to Johnson offered the great comic moments of the series; Haddin never settled after Lord's. If he was following anyone other than Gilchrist his batting would be manna from heaven. As it is, it's matter of fact. 

Out of 10 - 7

Mitchell Johnson

105 runs at 17.50, hs 63; 1 x 50; 20 wickets at 32.55, bb 5-69

In years to come, the full impact of the slaying of Hughes and Johnson on the tourists' psyche may be known. They were the two gun young players, the ones that allowed the team to argue that they were en route to somewhere cool and exciting. But Johnson is the Australian Harmison, right down to missing the cut strip. His opening spell at Lord's was the real turning point of the series. England may not have known  they would win after that, but they knew that they could. 

Out of 10 - 4

Peter Siddle

91 runs at 18.20, hs 35; 20 wickets at 30.80, bb 6-71

No man is more Australian than the Sizzler. Expect him back in four years, this time sporting an enormous moustache, accompanied by some hard-won craft to go with the graft.

Out of 10 - 7

Ben Hilfenhaus

40 runs at 20.00, hs 20; 22 wickets at 27.45, bb 5-80

The only bowler on either side to average under 30 per wicket, he was reminiscent of Hoggard at his sharpest. A jaffa did KP all ends up at Cardiff. 

Out of 10 - 8

Stuart Clark

38 runs at 12.66, hs 32; 4 wickets at 44.00, bb 3-18

Bowled Australia back into it at Headingley, but he's 33 and can't play at Leeds every week. Those sixes though...

Out of 10 - 6

Nathan Hauritz

45 runs at 22.50, hs 24; 10 wickets at 32.10, bb 3-63

Should Hauritz be pleased or discouraged by the general astonishment that he wasn't actually as bad as everyone [including his own team] thought? When you don't get a game at the Oval in a hot spell at the end of August, you might have your answer...

Out of 10 - 6

Tomorrow - the media pundit-by-pundit and the Phil Space Awards...

Bad for good: England player-by-player

Sometimes a cricketer will come out with a line of which any writer would be proud. Andrew Strauss said: 'When we were bad we were very bad, but when we were good, we were good enough'. Perfectly put, and perfectly true. 

As the old maxim goes, styles make fights. Compared to 2005, this was two drunks swinging at each other in a pub car park, but they were equally pissed and equally matched: England found one last punch, right at the end. Good enough, like the man said...

Andrew Strauss

474 runs at 52.66, hs 161; 1 x 100, 3 x 50

Graham Gooch without the callisthenics, Strauss is another of nature's stoics. He won't stare into the game and see what Brearley or Vaughan saw, but the payback comes elsewhere. There's been plenty of talk about which England batsman will be the first to 10,000 Test runs. No-one ever mentions Strauss - wonder why not? 

Out of 10: 9

Alastair Cook

222 runs at 24.66, hs 95; 1 x 50

10 - the number of batsmen above Cook in the averages. Has a technical flaw so obvious that Geoffrey Boycott's mother and her stick of rhubarb may be required to advise on it. If England had another available opener whose initials weren't RWTK, he might be allowed the winter off to solve it. As it is he'll plough on, nicking away.

Out of 10: 5

Ravi Bopara

105 runs at 15.00, hs 35

And so did Shane look upon the burning bush and then say, 'This man who has just made five score and more against the West Indies has the sin of vanity, and he shall disappear because of it...' And we all said, 'Ah Warnie, playing his Sherminator games again...' A number five bat, for which position England now have Trott, Collingwood, Bell...

Out of 10: 3

Kevin Pietersen

158 runs at 38.25, hs 69; 1 x 50

Like a first reading of 1984, the sheer distopian horror of that initial sighting of the England team list without his name on it lingers in the heart. Still better than the rest on one leg, his greatness has grown with his absence. 

Out of 10: 6

Paul Collingwood

250 runs at 27.77, hs 74; 3 x 50

Well we'll always have Cardiff... It was an innings that carried its freight through the series. Collingwood's future employment rests on continued faith in his bloody-mindedness, but his edges are perceptibly blunting.

Out of 10: 6

Matt Prior

261 runs at 32.62, hs 51; 2 x 50

Ssshh. Hear that? No? That's because it's the sound of no-one talking about Matt Prior's wicketkeeping. Deserves tremendous credit for the improvement, which culminated in the stumping of North at the Oval. The added effort probably weighed on his batting which consisted of cameos. The utter purity of his ball striking can be jaw-dropping, just like Stewie's used to be. 

Out of 10 - 7

Andrew Flintoff

200 runs at 33.33, hs 74; 8 wickets at 52.12, bb 5-92

Notions of greatness surrounded him, but greatness is apparent rather than debatable. Flintoff himself nailed it: he was a player of great matches rather than a great player. There is something to be written about his ego, but not yet. For now, remember him at Lord's - an indomitable, hammy, temporarily irresistible force. 

Out of 10 - 7

Stuart Broad

234 runs at 29.25, hs 61; 2 x 50; 18 wickets at 30.22, bb 6-91

Pushed selectorial faith to the edge, but credit where it's due. Contrary to popular opinion, is nothing like Flintoff or Glenn McGrath. Instead, Broad's model should be Shaun Pollock - his physique and talent occupy a similar register. 

Out of 10 - 8

Graeme Swann

249 runs at 35.57, hs 63, 2 x 50; 14 wickets at 40.50, bb 4-38

The teams that form within teams are always interesting: Swann and Broad bubble with internal chemistry. They enjoy batting together, and at the Oval they became Strauss's first-choice partnership as bowlers. Like most spinners who aren't Warne or Murali, he requires favourable conditions, but produced two of the best balls of the series to get Clarke at Lord's and Ponting at Edgbaston.

Out of 10 - 7

James Anderson

99 runs at 16.50, hs 29; 12 wickets at 45.16, bb 6-127

There remains something chimeric about Jimmy Anderson. He's capable of easy and confounding brilliance, and he's equally vulnerable to the whims of conditions and pitches. Cricinfo describe him as 'strapping', but then that's Jimmy - everyone looks at him and sees something different. Nerveless batting in Cardiff, too.

Out of 10 - 7

Steve Harmison

31 runs at 31.00, hs 19*; 5 wickets at 33.40, bb 3-54

The 90s had its batting enigmas in Hick and Ramprakash. This decade has the bowling equivalent in Steve Harmison. Like Hick and Ramprakash, there's something unreachable about him. Watching him standing in the sun at the Oval, genuinely happy yet still entirely equivocal about his future pretty much summed him up. Let's part now and end the heartache.

Out of 10 - 6

Graham Onions

19 runs at 9.50, hs 17*; 10 wickets at 30.30, bb 4-58

Unlucky to be dropped for Harmison, but then he was dropped for the idea of Harmison rather than the reality, which softens the blow. Has a deceptive solidity to him, and getting Watson and Hussey with the first two balls of the day at Edgbaston was a highpoint of the summer. 

Out of 10 - 7

Ian Bell

140 runs at 28.00, hs 72; 2 x 50

A list of current Test number threes: Ponting, Sangakkara, Dravid, Sarwan, Amla, Younis Khan. Need we go on?

Out of 10 - 4

Jonathan Trott

160 runs at 80.00, hs 119; 1 x 100

Strauss, KP, Prior... all from the land of Trotters' fathers, so no wonder he felt right at home. Fine, fine debut, big match temperament and all that. England will hope he can bat higher than five [perhaps even you know where]. Two small things: he'll get dried up pretty quickly scoring where he does; and in the first innings he got very offside of the short-pitched stuff, all of which will be noted.

Out of 10 - 9

Monty Panesar

11 runs at 11.00, hs 7*; 1 wicket at 115, best 1-115

The best seven not out since Matthew Hoggard at Trent Bridge. Worth an MBE, surely? 

Out of 10 - 5

Tomorrow: The Strines...

Elegy for Ronald

The gentle skies of autumn aren't quite here, but Ian Bell's international summer of batting has already come and gone: a seventy, a fifty, three failures; his last two knocks over and done on the first two days of the Test.

Bell has been a shadow-like presence, as insubstantial as he's sometimes good-looking. His 72 could yet be the highest individual score of the match, but even if it is, his contribution doesn't feel as though it carries that weight.

In a way he is emblematic of a series played out between two fragile, flaky teams who lurch capriciously between good and bad, and where luck has played a bigger than usual role. We still know no more about him now than we did at the start.

Perhaps that's the point. With Ian Ronald Bell, there might be nothing more to know. He is what he is, and England will take it or leave it. 

Win or lose, change is coming for England. Colly has almost exhausted the goodwill of his innings at Cardiff, KP will be fit again, Bopara is a natural number five, the side must be rebalanced without Flintoff. Ian Bell, the schoolboy who went to war, may not be back for a while.

Office solutions

After Andrew Strauss and Ian Bell were dismissed by apparent no-balls at the Oval:

Caller to Phil Tufnell's radio show: 'They should just put a line of plasticine down, like they do for the long jump'.

Phil Tufnell: 'Or a beam of light across the crease, sets off a buzzer in the umpire's pocket when it's broken. Job done'.

Or they could just get the third umpire to check the replay, lads...

Consistency

In his comment below this post, Rob argued that the naming of the England squad in Saturday's papers - a story that proved entirely and unsurprisingly accurate - was spin rather than leak. At first I disagreed, and then, after Geoff Miller did his rounds of the radio and TV studios on sunday morning, I began to see his point.

A leak reveals the news, spin accents the parts of it that the spinner wants you to talk about. In making sure that the story was about Trott, Bopara, Key and Ramprakash, Miller was barely challenged on the most extraordinary decision of all - to bat Ian Bell at number three.

You could drive a truck through the stats. Bell has batted three times in this series, scoring 53 [during which he was out three times], 8 and 3 for an average of 21.33; in his last nine Tests his average has dropped from 44.28 to 39.84; he averages 24.60 against Australia; he averages 18.08 against Australia in England; he averages 31 batting at three; has never scored a hundred batting at three; has never scored a hundred without another England player also passing a hundred in the same innings; he made 0 and 0 against Australia at the Oval in the decisive Test of 2005.

'We don't have a concern,' said Miller, loftily, a statement that must put him in a rather exclusive minority. 'We don't pick players who we have a concern about. I'm confident he has got the technique and ability to do a job there'. 

At least they can claim consistency: they consistently pick Ian Bell. 

NB: I have a strange vision of the future in which Bell becomes a kind of new century Ramprakash; eventually discarded by England and playing on and on in county cricket with a beautiful technique and a deal of comfort, opinion of him softening to a rosy glow...

  

Definitely no leaks.

'This selection panel is watertight with its information, and the only leaks yesterday related to the lunch order: cheese sarnies and wedges with salsa dip' - Mike Atherton, today's Times.

'England drop Ravi Bopara and bring in Jonathan Trott. Ian Bell will bat number three' - David Hopps, Guardian

'Jonathan Trott will come in for Ravi Bopara, though not in the number three position, a position to which Ian Bell is likely to revert' - Derek Pringle, Daily Telegraph

'England set to turn to Trott, with Key and Ramprakash missing out' - Stephen Brenkley, Independent 

'This panel does not have a history of radical changes of direction, and the only one expected now is the omission of Ravi Bopara' - er, Mike Atherton, the Times

Nope, doesn't sound like there's been any kind of leak there... 

State of England

Justin Langer's dissection of the English condition was the best thing in the papers this weekend, but even JL, frothing away at his keyboard in sunny Somerset, didn't pick up on one of our greatest traits: our telling weakness for the past.

We don't have a word for it, but the Portuguese do. It's saudade, which means something along the lines of 'nostalgia for a time and place that never really existed'. 

It's a very English concept when you think about it, and it's the one behind the calls for Mark Ramprakash to come back. There's a tremendous romance about the idea, for several reasons. Firstly, English cricket loves its old warriors - Washbrook, Cowdrey, Close, Steele, all called up for a last mission in front of the guns. We trust that concept for exactly the reasons Australia mistrust it: for what it says, for what it means. 

Ramprakash also embodies the desire for a happy ending, the need for reality to match up to the kind of redemptive storylines you get in novels and films. The weight of his fame [which comes in part from his success on reality TV] plays into it, too, as does the British sense of fair play. All of those runs must amount to something, after all. 

But is is nostalgia, it is romance. Ramprakash and Graeme Hick were my  favourite English players of their era. They mean more to me than Atherton or Hussain or Stewart; I'd rather watch either of them get 40 than see Thorpe get a hundred. They were special in their way. Ramprakash's achievements over the last four years have a great nobility about them because they've been built by his pure love of batting. 

Yet if Ramps played at the Oval, it wouldn't just be about England needing a number three. It would be about the baggage he brings with him, his own and ours. We'd be asking him to bat not for his future, but for his past. And that's a very English thing.

NB: Strangely, the one way it might work would be if Ramprakash were not the only change, and Key went in ahead of him. That would skew the expectation, redistribute the pressure more evenly, make it less about either of them and more about the team as a whole. Wonder what JL would do...

Know what I mean?

Had been scratching about for a sporting analogy to sum up this Ashes series, and as England blundered around yesterday it came to me: it's Frank Bruno versus Oliver McCall.

The man in one corner past his best but still beloved of his country, a nearly man, a noble giant, superficially in great shape, proficient against lesser opponents, exposed when challenging for the big titles, but a fighter possessed of a sunny determination to make things right even as he drinks in the last-chance saloon.

The other corner a champion, not one of the great champions of the past, but one still possessed of great physical gifts. A flake, though, too, capable of kayoing Lennox Lewis one week and crying in the ring the next. 

They begin to fight, and somehow, against the odds, almost miraculously, Big Frank gets ahead. He boxes steadily, building a lead as he realises that his opponent is on the slide, not what he was, highly strung and all over the place. The crowd's belief grows along with Big Frank's. The middle rounds tick by, only a couple left now - come on Big Man! - Frank so far ahead he can't be caught, only knocked out, running short of gas, legs slowing up, face puffing but still in there.

And then it happens, with the end in sight, McCall, the Atomic Bull, the man with a chin of granite, finds a punch from somewhere, and Big Frank, desperately tired, does what he always does, hits the ropes, straight-backed, legs stiff, chin hanging out. Only a minute to go, but a desperate, endless one as the crowd look through their fingers at this horror film, one they've seen played out plenty of times before, the one with the unhappy ending... Come on Frank, hold on, son. Just stay upright and you've got a chance...

Big Frank did it of course. McCall couldn't quite land the conclusive blow, even though he was eminently capable of it. Frank had big bloody tears in his eyes when they called his name out as the winner, barely had the strength to get his arms above his head... tremendous, it was... moving somehow. 

Not the greatest fight of all time, but a great night. Bit like this series... Come on Frank, lad...

When batsmen go bad

Physical injuries have a lumpen, sinister simplicity to them these days: you pump in cortisone and saline until it doesn't work any more and then you slice and dice [just ask Vaughany, Jonesy, Freddie and the club's newest member KP]. But psychological hurt - brain knack and heart break and their unwelcome relations - require more complex remedies.

Each side has a basket case batsman on the go. England have Ravi Bopara and Australia Phil Hughes. How similar they appear; young, cocky, fast-scoring, marketable, good hundreds on their CVs. How quickly the brain-worms have penetrated their grey matter; like kids in class reduced to mumbling when asked a direct question.

Yet under the surface, their problems are very different. Hughes has a core to his batting. It's a weird core, sure, but it's a core all the same. He's the classic autodidact. There was a show on TV once called Prophet, about an evil genius of a businessman who'd spent his childhood in a cardboard box with a hole cut in it through which he watched television. His entire psyche was the result of daytime soaps [it was an idea ahead of its time]. Hughes's concept of batting is based on a similar unreality. Like a daytime soap, it obeys its own internal logic. He doesn't bat like he's ever watched anyone else bat, but there is method there. 

Conventional remedies won't solve his problem, because the problem cuts at his mind and ego as well as his technique. Being bounced out, sorted by the short ball, is emasculating, because it implies physical fear at the crease. Hughes' vulnerablity is magnified because he likes to stay legside of the ball. Conventionally, it's the coward's side of the line. 

That's not so in his case. His technique is based around it so the solution should be too, and maybe only he can work out what it is. 

It should start, though, from the implicit truth of any short ball - it's not going to hit the stumps. Thus, a short one will only get you out if you let it. That basic reduction served Brian Close* well. Hughes could simply not play anything aimed at his body. As any rheumy old coach will tell him, the bowler will get tired before he will. 

For Hughes, a physical solution might fix his mind, reassure him. Bopara seems different. As Shane Warne pointed out, he doesn't appear to know in his heart what sort of player he is, and it worries him. He bats on shifting sands, reacting to each dismissal with a revised method. Like a lot of talented batters, he has too many options and he's had them indulged by less rigorous examination. 

His hero, Sachin Tendulkar, had a spell where he kept getting out to the cover drive. Putting to one side the knowledge that it was one of his most beautiful and productive shots, Sachin made 241 against Australia at the SCG without hitting it. It took him more than ten hours. 'You learn so much when you have to figure things out for yourself,' he said afterwards. 'It was about setting myself a challenge and having the discipline to see it through'.

Everything Bopara needs to know is contained within those words. 

* Subject of the great Eric Morcambe line, 'I always know it's summer when I hear the sound of leather on Brian Close'. Magic.

Lord's: A nightmare for the serfs...

Did you know that England haven't beaten Australia at Lord's since 1934? Of course you f*&^ing did. It's been repeated so often this week, even Ricky Ponting's remembered it. Strangely, some far more relevant stats have gone unremarked. Namely, and firstly, that before this season Australia were the last team to win a Test of any description there, back in the hazy, crazy days of 2005.

Since then, six matches, six draws*. First innings totals in those games: 551-6; 528-9; 553-5; 298, 277, 593-8. The teams batting last in those games scored: 537-9; 214-4; 89-0; 282-9; 269-6; 393-3.

In those six matches, England took, in order, 19 wickets; 14 wkts; 10 wkts; 19 wkts; 16 wkts; 13 wkts. 

There is just one anomaly that brings hope to that forsaken, low-living breed, the bowler: only once, against New Zealand last year, has the team batting second taken a first innings lead - England made 319 to New Zealand's 277.

In all, 7,287 runs have been scored at an average per wicket of 44.16. Of the 240 wickets available, 165 have fallen. 

The pitches have started flat and deadened. So the spread bets are on. After 181 overs in Cardiff, how many more will England bowl at Lord's?

* Discounting the midwinter game against West Indies, who were present in body only. 

NB: The forthcoming retirement of the Human Urn has necessitated some backtracking from Phil Space Trophy contender Paul Hayward: 'The 2005 mythology resists most attempts to assert perspective on what he has achieved since in England colours'. Er, no it doesn't, but luckily, Hayers recovers in time for one more stab at defining exactly what Andrew Flintoff was: 'He was the spirit, the entertainment, the aggression, the patriotism and the bonhomie of the Ashes, all telescoped into one set of whites,' he writes. 

'All along there has been a delusional quality both to the faith placed in Flintoff by St George's flock and those Australian players who still feared his potential to win a match all by himself...' And of course by P. Hayward. Let's hope he doesn't lose interest in his space-filling mission now that he's asserted some perspective on Freddo...

KP: outside providence

As Bob Woolmer observed in The Art And Science of Cricket, 'to review the raw, split-second data of what actually happens when batters execute a shot is to wonder how any batsman survives more than one delivery'. The process is so physiologically complex, so open to error and chance, that it encourages a belief in providence: you need to be good, but you also need to be lucky. 

Anyone who's played the game grasps this. And it's an entirely human reaction to imbue the arrival of luck with some significance, even though it's counter-intuitive to do so. It's the transient nature of luck, the unreadable tides of form and fortune, that are at the root of the reaction to some of the shots that Kevin Pietersen plays; the one when he was on 94 in Birmingham, on 97 in Jamaica, on 69 in Cardiff. They don't only bugger up the team, they stick two fingers up at luck, they open the door to something else. 

After the latter two of those knocks he was out almost identically in his next innings, bowled spectacularly and early. Random coincidences, but ones that can be interpreted by some as having an element of fatal retribution.

They don't, of course. It's just the game, and how it goes. It's not governed by a watchful god, there's no element of karma to it. But it's Pietersen's lot to get the brickbats that come attached. The British press will indulge mediocrity for far longer than they will profligacy.

KP doesn't need the newspapers to tell him what he's done wrong. He's one of the most intuitive and adaptable batsmen out there. He may wrestle for control of his game and his nature for a few innings, but he'll be back. His defiant public defence of his sweep shot is purely to make himself feel less vulnerable. His repentance will come in private.

What will be key is how England deal with it. Clues are available from two of the shrewdest analysts of the game. 

Shane Warne: 'He reminds me of Mark Waugh. Junior often got out in ways that looked horrible. I think Pietersen too just gets bored. That's where hunger comes in... he prepares better than anybody for games, but he has to put the team first, not himself... there's no doubt he can be the best batsman in the world. He has so much talent, but the best players have that determination to make big scores and don't make silly mistakes. You have to be careful not to overcriticise. Cricket isn't played by robots'.

Clive Rice: 'I think he can go where no batsman has gone before if he can improve his concentration and hit a six followed by a single... With his ego, you have to boost it and boost it again'.

They're right. Pietersen is at his best when he feels the love. It nurtures him. So England must chide him gently, and feed his overwhelming talent. It's one of the few that Australia fear, and it should be handled with the care its rarity merits. 

Something of nothing

A day in which:

Seven wickets fell in 96 overs

20 boundaries took 414 balls

A man laboured 344 minutes to score 74

Marcus North bowled seven overs for 14 runs

Two men who can't bat knocked away, missed and left 69 deliveries

No-one won

And Test cricket proved, once again, the greatest game on earth. Ain't life gloriously strange?

Knowledge is power

Has there ever been a weirder opening partnership, technically, than Simon Katich and Phil Hughes? 

Katich though has sussed batting in England. He played everything late. That part of his game was classical. He'll never be an oil-painting but he'll score a lot of runs this series, and there's something pleasing about watching a grizzled pro who's cracked it. Steve Waugh was never greater than he was at the end, when he'd boiled his scoring shots down to the back cut, cover drive and slog sweep. 

Proper batting, as Geoffrey calls it.

Andrew Flintoff: Urn shaped

On Sunday, Paul Hayward said Andrew Flintoff was 'a country charging in to bowl, a culture brandishing a bat'. But that was before he got Phil Hughes out. 

'Flintoff is the Ashes in human form. The story flows through him like the Taff streams through Cardiff'.

Simon Barnes didn't think Freddie was the human Ashes though.

'Sometimes Flintoff will turn himself into a Rodin statue, holding a vigorous pose to indicate extremes of emotion. There he stood, legs planted wide, head bowed, hands clasping head: Freddie Agonistes'.

What will the righteous Andrew be if he actually you know, gets more than 30-odd and a wicket?

Doubtless the lads will keep us posted...

Virgin soldiers

At last then, some actual cricket to write about... Show me a man who knows who's ahead after a day like that, and I'll show you a fool or a knave, my friends.

With the weight of expectation, things were always likely to be heightened, and so it proved. England were edgy, manic, prone to doubt or perhaps disbelief while they were ahead. Australia were uncertain too, curiously passive for long passages before they remembered that they were, well, Australian. As England's first day of the Ashes usually goes, this one was a raging success. As Australia's usually go, well, the echo of what they were bounces around them. 

England played more to type, getting themselves in and then getting themselves back out again, and in pairs too. Pietersen played his brainless one thirty runs earlier than usual; Collingwood was dismissed using the shortest backlift visible to the naked human eye; Ravi Bopara was done in by a slower ball so flirtatious that it could have been imprisoned along with that honey trapper today [the deception that the slower ball pulls on the senses is worth a separate entry - suffice to say here that one I was suckered by two decades ago came pouring back through the holes in my brain-stem as Ravinder trudged back up the steps].

Australia went off piste. Their pre-lunch plans were beautifully thought out. Bopara was chinned, Cooked out-fished, Strauss embarrassed. They had Pietersen sussed too, making him play on that braced front knee, his eyes high over the ball. And then after lunch... they apparently decided not to bother persisting with it. Why get KP out, anyway?

The pitch and the tides had their effect. Australia will covet a first innings lead of 70+ to negate batting last, which means at least 400. It's impossible to know how achievable that is until they're actually out there. Fools and Knaves...

It was a taut day, a slow day, a raucous day, a heightened day. No-one won it, which means that no-one lost it either. Oh, and where exactly was Sky Sports' Shane Warne?

Statuesque

The traditional Wednesday in Wales start has flushed the great Simon Barnes into the open for his first - but almost certainly not last - entry into the Phil Space Ashes Urn Trophy contest.

'It's in silence that you find sport at its finest; that moment when thousands, utterly captivated by the same thing, cease to speak, cease to think, cease to breathe... All are silent. All are still. Just one figure in motion: the bowler, the only action figure on a field of white statues. You would think you could hear the beating of his heart from the back row of the stands'.

Barnes is the man who once wrote about a Liverpool goal 'it was not scored by Luis Garcia, as the announcer claimed. It was scored by Havoc, for last night Liverpool cried Havoc and let slip the dogs of sport', so he's clearly only just warming up here. Nonetheless, the image of a non-thinking, non-breathing crowd [comatose at the idea of watching Simon Katich for several hours, maybe?], the use of  'figure' twice in the same sentence and the thought that Harmi's heartbeat might actually be audible at 90 yards smack of prime space-filling. Good effort lad!

The longest day

Yes, in just a few hours' time, we will no longer have to read any more Ashes previews in the papers. The relief is almost physical.

Phil Space: The Ploughman's Spirit

One Ashes 'battle' has already begun: the one in the newspapers. And what a battle it will be, as the chief sportswriters take their annual month off from football and turn their gimlet eye and deathless prose towards the cricket.

First to the plate is the Observer's Paul Hayward, on Andrew Flintoff: 

'To them [Australia] Pietersen is an extravagant run-maker they need to get out pronto. A problem, yes, but not a whole rash of complex challenges, as Flintoff is. They know Pietersen is semi-detached in this England camp. He could never embody English cricket's ploughman spirit, nor hold the side together in adversity, except through weight of runs. Flintoff can do both. He is a country charging into bowl, a culture brandishing a bat. To attack him is to poke the beehive of his nature, which survives the ravages of injuries and calls to the night porter to keep on coming with the trays of drinks'.

A strong start from Hayward, you'll have to agree, but the summer is young. Let the space filling begin.

NB: The Best of the Sportswriters will be recorded here, with the winner receiving the entirely unofficial and arbitrary Old Batsman Phil Space Ashes Urn Award. Lets hope the series gets the prose it deserves...

Achilles' last stand

There was a revealing line in Andy Flower's interview with Mike Atherton in the Times.

'This [missing the trip to Flanders] was not a big enough thing for me to drop Andrew Flintoff. No way was it a serious enough issue to do that, to finish someone's career'.

Those words should chill Flintoff rather than comfort him.

Just like the other Manchester uber-lad Ricky Hatton, Flintoff refuses to concede the damage alcohol is doing. He's 31, persistently injured and the fine motor skills required to bat against the world's best bowlers have been eroded. 

It's not over yet, but as Flower says, it may only be a session or two away.

Brett Lee: They lied

Brett Lee just bowled his way into the Test team at Worcester. He produced an over in which every ball was over 90mph [at least on the Sky radar, a device you wouldn't necessarily want pointing at your car in 30mph zone], and he cleaned up Joe Denly, who was set on 66, and Ian Bell first ball*. He almost removed Vikram Solanki's foot with the next one, which was a reversing yorker timed at 95mph. The Lions were 172-0 at the time.

That over reminded me of the story of Ali fighting Frazier in Manila, when Frazier hit Ali with a left hook that Ali later said 'could have brought cities down'.

'They told me you was finished Joe,' Ali whispered.

'They lied,' Frazier replied. 'They lied'.

*Insert your own joke here.