Late baby, late

I like to think of Duncan Fletcher siting in front of the cricket on the sofa at home, still in his England top, sunhat and shades. Periodically, Mrs Fletch will find that he has silently arrived at her shoulder, where he'll whisper in her ear something like, 'KP's head has fallen outside the line again'...

He remains a supreme technical analyst, which is why his Guardian columns are always good value. Yesterday's was about playing swing bowling. He points out the error of Shane Watson's ways before advocating again his trademark forward press to counter late-ducking swing at pace.

That still requires two movements of the batsman, and even Fletch admits it's a hard thing to get right. To me it's just a new take on the old maxim, 'see it early, play it late'. The very greatest batsmen, Tendulkar for example, just stand still while they pick up the line. It's easier then to play later, because there's less going on.

Eion Morgan played beautifully late yesterday. People wonder how he seems to score so quickly without battering the ball. The answer is that he gets full value for his shots because he so rarely hits it at the fielder. Like Lara he strokes it where they're not, waiting for the ball and using subtle angles of the bat. Fletch approved, I'm sure...

Face value

To the Rose Bowl, for an implausibly perfect summer day in the Hamble Valley, cradle of the game, the kind of day that you bat on in your dreams. The game was won by a dream of an innings too. The prime currency in the new age of batting is power, but yesterday, power alone was not enough. Rapier thrusts were what counted.

The last time I saw the captain of Australia in the flesh, he was walking down the street. Yesterday, before the game, he took some throw downs right in front of us. For anyone who loves batting, it was worth the price of admission alone. He brought a couple of bats, and, with one pad on, began drilling the ball back past the thrower. The first bat went okay, but when he switched to the second, the ball started to ring from it. With small turns of the face, he hit balls of exactly the same length and direction in an arc from cover to mid on.

Shane Watson, a new brutalist, had a go after Ponting, and he struck the ball harder, but each of his just ran straight back past the thrower. After a while he lumbered off, none the wiser about his game.

Ponting had a couple of purely struck boundaries before he fell hook-pulling [again], but Eion Morgan showed exactly the value of being able to control the bat face as England glided home. Gripping right down at the base of the handle, he slid the ball through ridiculously narrow gaps in the field without raising his bat above the horizontal. Ponting knew Australia were done way before the end, and he knew he couldn't stop it, either.