Learning those lessons

'If we are honest to ourselves, the way we've done in the first innings - making 336-7 on day one - in hindsight wasn't a brilliant effort. As batsmen we take it on the chin and will make amends next time we play. The wicket is still very flat as their guys proved, and there are a lot of ways to stay in there but we didn't manage to find them. So in that respect we will learn the lesson'

- Andrew Strauss in Cardiff

Alastair Cook, Ravi Bopara, Matt Prior, Andrew Flintoff

- England batsmen dismissed yesterday in exactly the same manner as they were in Cardiff

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...

All-rounder

John Arlott called him, 'the most variously gifted Englishman of any age,' and Arlott, conjuring his musty magic from an old typewriter set next a glass of something good and red, was probably right. The sheer unlikeliness of CB Fry continues to astonish, more than half a century after his death.

Had he confined himself to cricket, 30,000 runs at 50.22 in an era when a decent average was 30, plus the famous six consecutive hundreds would have been enough to cement the legend. Yet they were simply a sidebar to the rest of his life, which reads like it was invented by Monty Python. He equalled the world long jump record, appeared in the 1902 FA Cup Final, played rugby for the Barbarians, modelled, stood as an MP, became an advisor to the League of Nations [where he may or may not have been offered the throne of Albania], authored much of Ranjitsinhji's Jubilee Book Of Cricket, launched and edited two magazines, invented the concept of the sporting star's newspaper column, was the first person on This Is Your Life, taught at Charterhouse and became a captain in the navy reserve. His party trick was to jump backwards onto a mantlepiece from a standing position.

He engaged in a bizarre marriage, probably for money, to a terrifying woman named Beatrice who was 10 years older than him and who'd had a lover called Charles Hoare since the age of 15. Mental illness shadowed his gifts. He first broke down at university, but the real horrors descended later in life, when he fell in thrall to Hitler [and tried to persuade von Ribbontrop that Germany would produce 'a blond Grace' should the Reich take up cricket], developed an irrational fear of Indians [despite his lifelong friendship with Ranji], dressed eccentrically, suffered paranoid episodes and was once found running naked on Brighton beach.

It was an epic life with a great sad sweep to it, and it's nice to see that the good people at Philosophy Football have diversified into real sport and produced an excellent Fry t-shirt. Worth checking out if that's your thing. Now c'mon boys, how about a WG one? You know you want to...

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...