Looking Beyond the Possible Five-Nil...

Looking at the possibility of a five-nil whitewash there’ll undoubtedly be people sitting back and muttering things about wishing things were more competitive.

Which, of course, is balderdash, unless you’re an England supporter.

Five-nil is the score line that, in some cases, suggests that there probably aren’t too many things that could have been done much better. It means you’ve probably got most things right, but the important question involves where we go from here.

Taking our prompt from this article (Australia eye unforeseen clean sweep) there are a couple of points that need to be emphasised.

Brydon Coverdale (for mine, one of the best cricket writers going around) nails things pretty well towards the bottom of the piece when he offers the following Stats and trivia:

• Should Australia win in Sydney it will complete their third 5-0 Ashes clean sweep, after 1920-21 and 2006-07

From which, one would suggest that if the whitewash does fall into place, rather than wishing things were more competitive, you should enjoy it. It doesn’t happen very often.

• If Australia name an unchanged side it will be the first time they have ever used the same XI throughout a five-Test series

Which is interesting on two counts. First, it suggests that we’ve got our strongest side on the paddock, and have managed to keep it there without issues involving injury or loss of form. That’s remarkable in its own way, but also suggests we don’t have players on the fringe of

Test selection sticking their hands up. There are still question marks over much of the batting order, and there’s no one in the top six who looks to have cemented a place in the long term.

Warner and Rogers look like a reasonable opening combination, though Rogers isn’t going to be there next time England tours here. He may well be missing when we head across to defend the urn.

Watson remains a question mark at Three, and the question of whether, and how much, he bowls remains.

Clarke is only there until his back goes and isn’t going to be able to play every Test of every series in the meantime. That doesn’t mean he’s going anywhere soon, but every Test and every series could be his last.

Smith needs to become more consistent, and Bailey needs to translate limited over success into long form consistency, and probably needs to do it very quickly.

Haddin has is no more than a medium-term prospect with the gloves, and Wade has slipped down the pecking order.

This fast bowling trio is only going to last as long as it takes for one of them to break down.

Ironically, that means the best long-term prospect in this eleven is possibly Nathan Lyon, who is coming along very nicely.

• In the event of a draw or an Australian win, Australia will jump from fifth to third on the ICC Test rankings and England would drop from third to fourth. An England win would leave England third and Australia would move up from fifth to fourth

And this one, folks, is the one that matters.

Win this Test and we still have to overcome India and South Africa, and we’ll need to do it home and away. We’ve got a huge reality test coming up next month with three Tests in South Africa.

A glance at the Future Series/ Tournaments page on Cricinfo shows nothing on the Test front before the next Australian summer and World Cups in both short forms this year (T20) and next (ODI).

So, in some ways, we’ve got a bit of time to catch our breath and take a look around.

As far as the short forms go, we’ve got five ODIs, a PM’s XI game and three T20s against England before that T20 World Cup, and the rest of the Big Bash to keep us amused in the interim.

We should be looking to make the semi-finals in that T20 World Cup. After that everything is pretty much in the hands of the cricketing gods.

We should be competitive in the 50 over version as well, and should be looking to make the final there.

But the key issue, as it always will be, involves getting to #1 in the Test rankings and, once we have, staying there.

That means, for mine, getting to the point where we’ve got our strongest side on the park, with adequate cover for each position and allowances for differing playing conditions.

If there’s one lesson to be learned from the position England currently find themselves in, it’s the need to have a reasonably strong squad with adequate and reasonably experienced reserves.

Using this eleven as the basis for that squad, we want two backup openers, someone who could slot into Three or Four, someone for Five or six, cover for the ‘keeper, three backup quicks with a couple of roles covered between then, a reserve offie, a potential leggie (bearing in mind that it might be Smith) and a left arm tweaker other than Clarke.

Do a head count out of that lot and you’re looking at a group of around twenty, drawn from six Shield squads, which would number somewhere between twenty and thirty players. Say one hundred and twenty regular first class players, and that’s one in six playing, on the verge of playing, or with an outside chance of playing, for Australia.

One in six, or thereabouts.

So, if we’re looking to go on from here, hit the top of the rankings and stay there, we need to ensure that the Shield is the strongest competition we can organise. It has to be hard fought, and it needs to be played on surfaces that aren’t too far removed from Test cricket.

Shield cricket should have batsmen amassing substantial scores against bowlers who are looking to insert themselves in the pecking order when it comes to Australian selection. They need to be doing that on wickets that offer pace and bounce on Day One, flatten out on Days Two and Three and start to take turn on Day Four.

We should be taking a serious look at playing Shield games over five days.

Ironically, one thing that will make that possible is a continuation of this season’s major innovation, playing the interstate one-day series in a block in one capital city. It doesn’t always have to be Sydney, and it probably doesn’t actually need to be a capital city, but the notion of the interstate one-daters as a pre-season comp has definite merit and is worth persisting with.

It serves as a warm-up for the Shield, which runs nicely into the Test series, and since we’re going to be burdened with a Big Bash into the foreseeable future, at least it slots nicely in towards the limited overs side of the international calendar.

And, as far as the emerging players are concerned, we need the up and coming quicks to be working on their batting through that time when their bowling workloads are being strictly managed.

We need to have all batsmen working on being able to bowl something reasonably well. Doesn’t have to be particularly flash, just an ability to land something reasonable on a fairly consistent basis, hopefully with a variation thrown in.

Every player in every squad under the age of twenty-five should also be working towards gaining professional, academic or tradesman qualifications so that they have definite prospects for life after cricket. These things should be a conscious effort on the part of the various State bodies as a way on ensuring the talent isn’t being drawn away by the football codes, which can offer bigger money at an earlier stage in the athlete’s career.

And, whatever we do, when all that starts to sound a little bit too close to routine and mundane, and we’re tempted to do something fancy, we need to give ourselves a pinch, and adopt a constant mantra of Keep it simple, stupid.

Oh, and nothing resembling a thirty-eight page document outlining the dietary requirements, thank you very much.

After the Gabba: 85%

The Critical Reader might feel Hughesy’s being a trifle harsh when he rates a victory by 381 runs with a full day to spare around 85%, but cast your mind back to 6-153 at the tea break on Thursday with Haddin on 24 and Johnson on 12, and you may agree.

That partnership went on to add a further 93, and much of what followed as the bowling side of the game ran according to the script was only possible because Six and Seven dug us out of a hole.

Still unconvinced? Check the fall of wickets. 1-12 (Rogers), 2-71 Watson, just before lunch), 3-73 (Clarke), 4-83 (Warner, when we needed him to carry on), 5-100 (Bailey) and 6-132 (Smith).

Hardly what the doctor ordered, and it wasn’t as if England's bowlers were bowling particularly well. They weren’t bowling badly, but this trio of quickies with Swann as backup isn’t firing as well as the battery they had, say, three years ago. Tremlett looked to be the weak link, and you can't bank on him being there again in Adelaide.

Warner scored runs in both digs, but we really needed him to go on in the first. Clarke came good in the second, but Rogers and Watson were disappointing. Bailey needs to do more to cement his place in the side. If he does Smith will need more than his first innings 31 to hold on to Five, particularly if we start moving into batsmen who can bowl at Six or Haddin at Six with a bowler who can bat (Faulkner as one possibility) at Seven.

You don’t expect everyone in the batting order to fire in every innings, but most of them should be able to manage a decent score in one innings out of two.

The batting wasn’t the only area where there was room for improvement. We missed two run outs due to poor positioning by the bloke who was taking the return at the bowler’s end. As it turned out, neither proved particularly expensive.

But if we see fielders breaking the stumps before the ball arrives (Bailey) or taking the ball in front of the stumps and removing the bails while doing so (Lyon) there's a need for solid remedial work in the fielding drills.

Dr Hughesy would prescribe at least an hour’s rundown, throw down, underarm for the first instance, and a repetition with a relentless workout on the underarm for the second.

The bowling, on the other hand, worked very well, backed up by savvy field settings and some rather productive verbals, which is the area where I expect to hear a fair bit of Soap Dodger bleating over the next day or two.

I spent the first bit of the morning walk pondering the verbals, and came to the conclusion the Anderson sledge (the one about broken arms) may have verged on the intimidatory, but was fair enough.

With the field that was set at the time,  you wouldn’t have been expecting too much that was pitched up but you want the batsman going back so when you do pitch it up you’ve got a chance of a yorker or LBW. Comments that suggest the use of limbs to protect the head are a way of getting the batsman into the right mindset to cooperate with your game plan.

That’s fair enough in my book.

It’s much fairer than the Barmy Army’s attempts to manipulate the result by taking down key players on the Australian side.

Their main target last time around out here (and the previous series over there) was, of course, Mitchell Johnson, and given what they deliberately dished out once a degree of fragility was found they have no right of reply in this instance.

In fact, given the fact that they were still in fine voice after the second resumption yesterday afternoon I’m inclined to mark our performance down further on the grounds of insufficient dominance.

I won’t really be satisfied until they’re reduced to total silence by repeated thrashings of their precious little batch of fresh-faced provocateurs.

That’s not likely to happen when the proceedings resume in Adelaide in ten days’ time, and I doubt they’ll have been given the treatment prescribed by Dr O’Keefe on their way out to the tour game in Alice Springs. A two day trip on a Greyhound bus with faulty air-conditioning is a nice concept, but one doubts the ability to con them into it.

The new drop in pitch at the Adelaide Oval is by all accounts I’ve stumbled across, close to a feather bed, and we’ll need to score big runs in both innings to ensure the draw that is the worst desired result.

A win in Adelaide would be better, but the last thing you want is to be heading into Perth with the series level. You never know, by the time they get to Perth the Soap Dodgers might have gotten their bowling sorted out.

But even if they don’t there’s a good deal of work to be done before we head off across the Indian Ocean to face quality opposition in South Africa.

On the morning of Day Four…

On the morning of Day Four, The Inquisitive Reader may be a tad bemused by the absence of lengthy prognostications from Hughesy after Days One and Two.

I didn’t have much to add to this looks to be our best Top Six, so let’s see how they go prior to the commencement of play. Instead, I got my teeth into a lengthy Republican rant about the significance of that Ashes Test back in 1882 on the morning of Day One.

That was the only Test played on that particular tour, and a quick look at Wikipedia and Cricinfo failed to reveal any details about the rest of the tour, but then I recalled I’ve got a shelf full of cricket reference books. Suffice it to say I then spent the rest of the time before the toss and through to the start of play reading Jack Pollard, taking notes and thinking of returning to the piece I’d started on the morning of Day Two.

Day One also happened to have some personal significance, and was celebrated with some good bottles, so I was late out of bed on the morning of Day Two, skipped the morning walk and generally took it easy until the start of play.

That Republican rant will have to wait, and the content relating to WG Grace’s gamesmanship and the start of the Ashes will probably emerge at some stage, but since the subject got a bit of coverage on the ABC Radio coverage, that stage may be well into the future.

Commentary on the actual play on Day One would have been along the lines of This looks like our best Top Six, but thank goodness the lower order can bat, which could have veered off into further discussion of all-rounders, batsmen who can bowl and bowlers who can bat. We have, of course, been over that ground in reasonable detail, which is why the veering didn’t eventuate.

Yesterday morning saw me looking back at recent batting history with a variation on this is our best six and today’s the day for them to consolidate their places in the eleven intended. Tracking back over the entrails of 2009, 2010-11, India early this year and the first half of the two part series kept me going through the morning up to the resumption, and subsequent events put the kibosh on that line of thought.

On a day where Rogers and Watson could have cemented their places for the rest of the summer and Smith and Bailey needed to consolidate it would have been nice to have at least one of them put their hands up. Instead, it was Warner and Clarke, wasn’t it?

Figures.

The interesting part, for me, has been the weaknesses that seem to be emerging in the English side, something I don’t usually spend too much time on, but there are definite implications for our blokes that emerge from that sort of analysis.

The first one is that most of them don’t like it up ‘em, which means I hope we’ve seen the last of suggestions from Mitchell Johnson about slowing down and bowling line and length in the latter stages of his career. He needs to be bowling chest and throat music and extracting significant lift off a length at pace, and as long as he does that he’s worth persisting with.

Provided he’s getting bounce at pace he can afford to be slightly wayward, particularly if he’s got someone bowling dry at the other end. Siddle and Harris both managed to do that, as did Lyon, whose work with the ball should have ensured he stays on board through the rest of the series.

With Lyon as a long term Eleven, it’s up to the likes of Smith and Agar to work on their bowling (Smith) and batting (Agar, and any other contenders for a bowler who can bat spot at Six or Seven).

There’s an interesting contrast between Lyon (9-4-17-2 and 3-1-3-0, match figures 2 for 20 off 12) and Swann’s 53 overs 2 for 215. Swann, one notes, currently sits on equal seventh in the ICC Bowler rankings (with Siddle), just behind Harris at #6. Lyon will get a lot of work over the next two days, and should move upwards from his current #21 ranking.

Actually, having found them, it’s worth looking at those player rankings:

#6 on 782 is Harris.

#7 on 760 are Swann and Siddle.

#10 on 741 is Anderson, just ahead of Broad, who is #11 on 740.

#15 on 659 is Hilfenhaus, which is interesting, as is the ranking for Finn (#20 on 580).

#21 on 576 is Lyon, Johnson is #23 on 537, #24 on 524 is Bresnan, #26 on 518 is Pattinson, Tremlett #35 on 460 and Watson #40 on 423.

I’m not sure what those numbers mean, but for those who are playing in this game the rankings total 97 (Australia, including Watson, 57 if you don’t) versus 63 (England’s four specialist bowlers, this game. On the other column, with the numbers that determine the rankings you’ve got Australia 2655 (without Watson, 3078 with) versus England 2701.

Look at the figures for the four main bowlers and you’ve got a fairly tight series, much tighter than a recent 3-0 scoreline might suggest.

Based on those figures I went over to the batting list, looking at the first seven in the two batting orders, without Bailey and Carberry. The ranking totals, with lower scores being better read England 99, Australia 221. Understandable since there’s a substantial gap from Clarke (#5) to Watson (#32), Warner (#36), Smith (#43), Rogers (#46) and Haddin (#59).

The English order ranks #10 (Bell), #11 (Cook), 13 (Pietersen), 16 (Trott) and 17 (Prior) with a jump down to #33 (Root).

All of which stems from Hughesy’s attempt to get a form line between Swann and Lyon, so you can see what I mean about being sidetracked.

And it’s a good point to leave things since there’s a garden that needs some attention as the clock sneaks past seven-fifteen. Play, of course, resumes at ten, with England looking to bat two days and save the game. At 2-24 chasing another 537 to win I think we can rule out an England victory.

With an 80% chance of rain, between 2 and 8mm likely and a forecast of showers and the chance of a storm, the draw is an obvious threat, which makes for an interesting two days.

The View from Two Days Out…

A visit from The Actor yesterday morning gave a welcome opportunity to clarify the thoughts three days out from the resumption of Ashes hostilities. Grigor, being a regular correspondent to the op-ed pages of the local paper but doesn’t have access to a computer or email, needs someone to type up the correspondence, which I’m happy to do since the secretarial chore is invariably followed by an interesting conversation.

Recent interesting conversations had, however, skirted around the cricket, so once I’d finished the typing I directed our attention straight to The Gabba with a question about the final composition of the Australian eleven.

Everything seems cut and dried, except for the inevitable Faulkner or Lyon question, and that, I suspect, is largely going to depend on the state of the track. I like Lyon and reckon he’s coming on nicely, but if there’s a hint of soup in the wicket I think I’d be inclined to go with Faulkner.

If he’s included he’d have to bat Eighty, with Johnson at Nine with a Test ton under his belt and Harris and Siddle, neither of whom are mugs with the bat, at Ten and Eleven.

When you look at it in those terms, that’s a rather impressive batting line up.

Rogers and Warner to open, the accumulator and the aggressor making a rather interesting pair of counterfoils. Watson has to bat somewhere, probably harbours some lingering thoughts about opening, but Three might be an acceptable compromise for a man who seems to be used to getting what he wants.

Clarke at Four, Smith at Five and Bailey at Six is probably the best middle order we can assemble at the moment. Add Haddin at Seven and the bowlers as indicated and you’d have to be optimistic about the chances.

The notion of Faulkner at Eight also gave me the opportunity to revisit some thoughts on developing all-rounders, specifically as far as the emerging quicks are concerned. If they’re going to have their fast bowling workload strictly limited, they may as well work on the batting.

You never know. One of them might turn into the sort of genuine all-rounder who can bat in the first seven and contribute a full workload with the ball.

On the other hand, with a bit of work on the batting you might have a useful contender to contribute handy runs at Eight or Nine rather than a bunny to come in at Ten or Eleven.

Every little bit helps.

The discussion progressed from there into the whole issue of injury-prone quicks, which has been revisited often enough to be skirted around here, and ended up with Grigor expressing the hope that we’d have a competitive series.

That’s probably what almost everyone wants, but almost everyone doesn’t quite include Yours Truly.

A competitive series is fine with me, provided it involves an Australian side that’s playing close to or above 100%, and that notion gave me something to ponder on the pre-Jimbo portion of today’s morning walk.

The Critical Reader might have difficulty with the concept of achieving a result that’s better than 100%, but here’s my take on the seemingly incongruous mathematics.

I had cataract surgery at the beginning of 2012, and was surprised to be informed on a follow up visit that my eyesight was now better than 100%. That threw me for a while, but things got clarified on a subsequent visit when I ran across the very bottom line of the chart on the wall.

The second bottom line, I figured, equates to 100% normal vision, the best that you can reasonably expect to have. Read onto the next line and get things right and you’ve exceeded the perfect percentage.

So, as far as Australian cricket is concerned, I want to see an Australian side performing to around 100% of its potential. I’m not interested in a competitive series against Bangla Desh or Zimbabwe if it means we have to play down to their level to get the competitiveness.

Until recently,  we haven’t been sure what our best side is, and there seem to have been definite factors within the squad that have prevented individuals and the group as a whole delivering the best they’re capable of.

When you look at this Australian Twelve, I think it’s about the best Dozen we can deliver. If they can play to their full potential we’re going to go very close to getting The Urn back, and, yes, it will probably be a competitive series.

More significantly, there are a couple of players in there who have the potential to deliver something that will really make us sit up and take notice for all the right reasons, and that’s definitely something to look forward to.

That’s where I’m coming from, anyway...

Out of The Oval

What with the weather and all we’ve had the predictable amount of navel-gazing from people who have to write something to keep the pay cheques rolling in. Given the fact that I’m partial to a sleep in when I can manage it (and I actually did on Saturday and Sunday mornings) I figured it was an opportune time to leave the blogging alone and pursue other matters, but, at the end of the Test series we need to stop and consider a few matters, so here we go.

We could, of course, continue to blather on about The Niggle, and one notes a rather interesting bit of pot and kettle in the statement from the ECB discussed here. Uncle Fester’s remarks are supposed to constitute incitement, but one wonders exactly how far you’d get if someone was silly enough to start up a chant at The Gabba on the morning of November 21.

Hughesy has fond memories of consistent chanted sledging of the South Australian side during That Historic Sheffield Shield Final in 1995, and wonders what would happen if someone were to start up just one chant every time Mr Broad takes guard with the bat, walks back to his mark to bowl or handles the ball in the field.

Actually, if I was going to the ground that day I might be inclined to see what could be arranged, but you’d have to expect to be tapped on the shoulder by someone from Security and, more than likely, ejected from the ground to the accompaniment of orchestrated jeers from the Barmy Army.

One notes the following remark in the ECB statement: The ECB, in supporting its players, management support staff and their families, believe no one in the game condones incitement of any kind and leaves the topic muttering about pots, kettles and Barmy Armies...

Count the drinks, not the runs, wrote Brydon Coverdale a couple of days back, and we’ll probably get a little more pot and kettle action from irate England supporters claiming to be hard done by after Michael Clarke took his time towards the end of an intriguing run chase.  England took their time on Day Three, obviously out to ensure they couldn’t lose. They picked up the rate this morning, since they reckoned they were safe, ended up all out 377 and ended up being given a very gettable target in an extremely generous declaration that would have gone right down to the wire if they hadn’t gone off for bad light.

One notes their run chase started fairly brightly, and when Root departed it was 1-22. I wasn’t awake at the time, but a scan of the ball by ball doesn’t reveal anything exciting between then and Cook’s departure at 2-86 in the twentieth. It would have been interesting to see what might have happened if Clarke’s venture into spin (he had Lyon on to bowl the 9th, and bowled the 13th and 15th before trying Faulkner) had paid off with a wicket or two.

I’m quite sure, under those circumstances Pietersen would have had the same tonk he ended up having, but if he’d then got out reasonably cheaply they’d have shut up shop.

There was a bit of to and fro about England’s scoring rate on Day Three here, particularly from Faulkner, and it’s interesting to look at the comments under a fairly even handed summary of the day’s play here. I don’t usually head in that direction, and based on some of the blather there won’t be in a hurry to go back.

Because, in the end, despite the 3-0 score line, we’ve had a much closer series than most people anticipated. There seems to have been a certain amount of pooh-poohing of the story headlined Arthur reveals two-series strategy, which looks to me like a case of someone needing something to fill the column inches.

We wanted to try to push England really hard in England, but we wanted to win in Australia, Arthur told ABC Radio. Really? And this is supposed to be news?

So what have we got out of the end of this series?

First up, we’ve got a bowling attack that should be able to take twenty wickets in Australian conditions. It’s obvious the wickets we’ve just played on were tailored to suit Swann, but it’ll be a different kettle of fish when hostilities resume, assuming we’ve got a battery of fit quicks with Harris as a key player.

Second, you can probably be reasonably confident about more than half the batting order. Having chopped and changed, I’d like to see Rogers and Warner at the top, Watson at Three or Four, Clarke at Four or Five and Smith at Five or Six. Throw in Haddin, Harris if fit and Lyon and there’s eight out of the eleven with spaces for two quicks, one of whom will be Siddle and a gap at Three or Six, depending on what you’re going to do with a fit Watto.

Third, as pointed out here, England’s batting can be vulnerable if things are planned correctly, and while Australia's players - and selectors - lack resilience if tested for extended periods (good point) that batting order noted above looks to be close to as good as it’s likely to be unless Clarke’s back starts playing up again.

There’s the opportunity for someone (Hughes, Cowan or Khawaja, for starters) to claim back the Three with good scores in the early rounds of the Sheffield Shield, and the possibility of a younger bloke (Doolan is one possibility, though there are others) claiming a berth at Six with Watto staying at Three.

I like it, anyway.

There will, of course, be plenty to look forward to, though transmission from here won’t be resuming on a regular basis until mid-November, and may not be back thereafter, depending on travel arrangements and such.

The forthcoming one dayers and T20s? Push me to one side and call me a fuddy duddy with other fish to fry.

THe Oval Day 1: The Niggle and the Damage Done (Or Not, as the case may be)

Having made the point that the difference between the two sides in this Ashes series comes down to Ian Bell it’s worth making again on the back of a better than par performance on Day One of The Oval Test.

It could, of course, have gone drastically wrong, and at 1-11 with Warner heading back to the pavilion it was hard to avoid the suspicion that the nuts were dangerously loose and we were once again in a position where the wheels could fall off.

Watson’s 176 meant they didn’t, even after Rogers went fairly cheaply (23) and Clarke got himself into trouble against the short ball and ended up bowled Anderson, 7. Throw in 66 not from Smith and 18 from nightwatchman Siddle and you’d have to be fairly upbeat about Australia’s prospects.

I’ve been muttering about the injustices of a score line that reads 3-0, but would respectfully suggest the following antidote to any Australian supporter confronted with a gloating Pom.

Give him a chance to deliver his serve, fix him with a beady eye and inquire:

Take out Bell. How good would you be looking then?

Pause, then before he can get a reply in, hit him with:

Actually, take out Bell and Broad and where’d you be then? More than likely four-nil down against a side that’s playing well short of a hundred per cent.

That last point might be stretching it a tad, but this series has been a lot closer than the score line suggests, and much of the difference, once you remove Bell from the calculations, comes down to Broad, who is rapidly becoming a major pain in the you know where.

Which, of course, brings us back to the eternal subject of The Niggle.

Prior to the start of play there was much being made of Uncle Fester’s response to Mr Broad’s remarks about That Catch That Wasn’t.

Lehmann’s suggestion that Australian crowds should give the blond English dude who looks like he could pick up a gig in the remake of Brideshead Revisited (thanks for that one, Jimbo) a constant stream of sledge was being regarded as unsporting (or something) from the Pommie-phile commentariat, largely on the basis of what a few lagered-up occupants of Bay 13 might happen to deliver.

Say what?

This, mind you, comes from people who’d describe the antics of the Barmy Army as a colourless bit of mostly harmless fun.

As The Astute Reader might guess, the conjoined subjects of The Niggle and The Sledge occupied much of Hughesy’s cogitations on the morning lap around town and a fair bit of the conversation after the right on schedule rendezvous with Jimbo at the bottom of Herbert Street.

You might, of course, be inclined to believe Hughesy’s taking these things a little too far, but much of the pre-rendezvous cogitations concerned this article by none other than Glenn McGrath from The Guardian.

Bowlers have the wood on Australians, the headline reads, but a closer examination reveals a rather thoughtful and decidedly analytical piece on the influence of The Niggle when it comes to bowler dominance over particular batsmen.

A glance at that overnight score card shows Rogers out to Swan, which now makes six out of seven innings.

The more you get a batsman out the more it becomes psychological, The Pigeon opines, and he’s right on line, just short of a length hitting the top of off stump.

You want to build the pressure, make sure the batsman knows exactly what is going on, he continues a bit further down, as Hughesy casts his mind back to the short midwicket that automatically went into place when Alderman was bowling to Gooch back in 1989.

Then McGrath delivers the blow that loops things nicely back into the Land of The Niggle: And you do not have to confine the talking to the pitch – you can always say a few things in the media as well. Get commentators and fans talking about it, make it an issue, which is, of course, exactly what Broad was doing with his comments on That Catch That Wasn’t.

Brydon Coverdale’s one of the better cricket journos going around (IMHO) but he doesn’t quite get it right here. Lehmann fires, but misses the point
Instead of trying to rattle the England players, Australia's coach should focus on the issues in his own team, the headline says, which is true up to a point.

Actually, it’s not so much a case of trying to rattle the England players, more an instance of he’s had a Niggle at us, here’s one back. Which, to me is fine. It’s all part of The Niggle.

You’re not trying to rattle anybody. It’s more a case of inserting the grain of sand in the sock and waiting to see if it becomes an irritant.

There are some rather interesting manifestations of The Niggle that sprang to mind as I headed out along the jetty this morning, with, IMHO, the prime international example being, and I know Angry is just going to love this, the All Blacks and the haka.

Now, hang on, Hughesy, someone’s going to say. That’s part of their cultural tradition. You can’t complain about that.

Actually, you not only can, but you should. The same way that you can complain about the dude who has Jerusalem booming out over the P.A. at the start of every day’s play in this Test series. Suggest they give equal time to Down Under or Waltzing Matilda and see how far you get.

Suppose you’re looking to get out on the ground and warm up before the umpires come out. I’m not sure whether this is allowed under existing protocols, but say you wanted to. Warm up, have everyone loose and ready to fire right as the batsmen arrive at the crease.

Maybe you can, but what do you do when this dude hasn’t sung Jerusalem yet? And what do you do, assuming you’re out there and loosening up, when he starts to sing?

Keep going? Yes. Definitely. Have the British broadcasters condemn you as a bunch of upstart colonials lacking in respect for our cultural traditions. Good one. It’s all about making sure these things are working in your favour at the start, that welling of national pride that delivers the final adrenaline rush before the start of play.

Recognize it for what it is.

Just like the haka, which allegedly requires the opponent to stand and show respect in the face of quite obvious and bare faced intimidation wrapped up as cultural heritage.

Think I’m kidding?

How far would this suggestion get?

Fine, you can have Jerusalem. You can have it as your side, or your batsmen take the field. Develop a protocol that says Umpires, fielding side, batsmen, with the appropriate piece of music booming out over the P.A. Under that regime later today at The Oval you’d have Jerusalem followed by, say, Down Under. Tomorrow, more than likely, with England batting, the order would be reversed. Sound fair?

Seriously, how much of a hearing would that get?

It’s time we recognized these things as what they are, fairly blatant little exercises in gamesmanship wrapped up in patriotic bunting, and if you’re going to use them, there should be something in place for both sides.

According to Coverdale It is hard to imagine that Lehmann would have called Broad a cheat had he been in a press conference full of English reporters.

Why not? A press conference full of English reporters will feel quite free to make all sorts of comments about the abilities of the side you’re coaching, and will question anything they see as constituting dodgy practice.

No, it’s all part of The Niggle. And until the other mob stops it, you have to expect the right to respond.

After Durham

It’s hard to avoid the conclusion that the difference between the two sides in this Ashes series starts with the letter B. Quite simply, they’ve got a swag of ‘em and we’re definitely short in that department.

A look at the averages, now that we’ve left the Fourth Test in our wake, is fairly instructive.

For a start you look at Bell. Eight innings, one not out, an even 500 runs, three hundreds, two fifties and an average of 72.42. Next best Root and Pietersen at 37.14 and 34.5 and then there’s no one averaging over thirty.

With the ball, once you skip past Root, whose occasional offies have returned 3-34, there’s Broad with accumulated figures of 144.5 overs, 32 maidens, 17 for 433, averaging 25.47 with two five-fors and a ten-for. Straight underneath him is Swann with 209 overs, 37 maidens, 23 for 621, averaging an even 27 with a brace of five-fors.

The Australian side of the ledger, predictably under the circumstances, with the chopping and changing in selections, isn’t quite so rosy. Clarke is averaging just under 49.5 with the bat, Rogers an even 43, Pattinson, Agar and Warner in the thirties, with two games apiece and things sliding away from there.

With the ball it’s Harris with 20 for 385, averaging 19.25, Siddle with 17 for 447 averaging 26.29 and Lyon with an even 8 for 200 out of the two games he’s played.

You could probably go further with the analysis, but I think it’s fair to say Bell’s runs, the consistency in performance and the partnerships he’s formed with whoever has been at the other end have contributed a fair chunk of the difference between the two sides.

With England resuming overnight at 5-234, quick wickets were the key ingredient if we were going to set ourselves an achievable target, and while Bell didn’t survive the new ball (6-251) and Prior went for a first ball gozzer, Broad (13 off 7) Bresnan (45 off 90) and Swann (30 off 24) took the total to 330, leaving us with a tricky five over spell before lunch.

96 runs in less than two hours off roughly 21 overs was a bit more than you’d expect based on a fairly consistent rate around three an over through the first three days, but that’s what you get when you’re arguably above par for the wicket and conditions and you have the blokes down the end chancing their arms.

Set 299 to win, you’d probably have thought it a bridge too far, taking the wicket and conditions into account, and I was tempted to crash when rain delayed the resumption after lunch. I stuck around long enough to see Rogers’ successful referral, but at none-for, needing to catch Jimbo on the morning walk I headed to bed.

Things were looking good and the consensus among the radio commentary team seemed to be that wickets tended to fall in the morning against the new ball. They’d made much of the fact that the Broad-Bresnan-Anderson-Swann rear guard had stretched things to the point where Australia would have to negotiate two new balls.

On that basis, I reasoned, we’d probably have a tricky little chase in the first hour or two on Tuesday night, though I wasn’t confident we’d last.

Firing up the computer this morning, I wasn’t particularly surprised by the final 74 run margin, which seemed to sit comfortably with the long term stats. What really got me was the clatter of wickets from 1-109 (Rogers, 49) to 6-179 (Watson, 2).

Broad obviously must have bowled well, but a middle order that reads Khawaja 21, Clarke 21, Smith 2, Watson 2, Haddin 4 suggests a lack of stickability in a situation that demands you get your head down and grit it out.

Possibly, if just one of those five had managed to match their best score for the series (and they’ve all managed at least one fifty) and they’d all managed to bat to their fairly modest series average (Khawaja’s the only one who hasn’t got his average above twenty) we’d probably have been looking at that intriguing little struggle tonight scenario.

Instead, we’re looking to The Oval and wondering what we can salvage from the series.

At least we may have answered one question. I think you can pencil in Rogers and Warner as the opening combination at least until Boxing Day.

It’s a bit tough for Hughes and Cowan sitting on the side lines, but I’d probably stick with this middle order, Watson’s groin permitting if we were heading straight into the Fifth Test
.
But we’re not. There’s a tour match against Northamptonshire between now and The Oval, so that presents Hughes and Cowan to stake a claim, and if either can put together a reasonable score, he’d be looking good for Khawaja’s spot, though one assumes Khawaja will be getting time in the middle as well.

On that basis, Cowan or Hughes, with runs against Northants, in to Three, Khawaja or Smith with runs at Northants at Five or Six (or, possibly, both if Watson’s groin doesn’t come good). Faulkner or Agar are the alternative fall backs for Watto, but that’s going to depend on how the track at The Oval looks.

In the longer term we’ve got Rogers and Warner at the top of the order, Clarke in the middle, and three spots to fill. Someone has the opportunity to stake a firm claim on one of those spots over the next fortnight. If no one can manage that we’ve got an interesting few weeks at the start of the domestic season while we look for contenders.

Questions, questions, questions. It’d be nice to get some answers.

Durham Day 3

While it’s safe to assume we might get a question or two answered during Day Four at Durham the big issue is whether any additional questions raise their heads.

At the moment, after Day Three with England just over 200 to the good, you’d have to say things are delicately poised, but we’re not too far off the point where, on this wicket and under the conditions that seem to have run through the season at the venue, doable morphs into difficult.

Get the target up around 300 and difficult will turn into extremely tricky, and run it a bit further than that and we’re probably looking at virtually impossible.

Those calculations, by the way, would seem to apply to any batting line up.

The best score on the ground this season, and, unless I’m mistaken, the only first class score beyond 300 is the 6-339 Yorkshire put together in the fourth innings of their match against the local side, which was built around 182 from Root, who was dismissed just short of the target.

Bresnan came out and slapped the first ball he faced for four, securing the win, but the other double digit scores on the innings were 39, 26, 21 and 50.

So if there’s going to be a target near 300 here, someone is going to have to bat very long. Root needed 375 minutes and 283 balls to amass that score, and if we’re looking at a successful chase someone in a batting lineup that hasn’t demonstrated a great deal of stickability will need to get the head down and grind it out.

The key bit, in the morning at least, will be grabbing those last five English wickets, with the big question mark going over Watson’s fitness.

The time it takes to wind up the innings might not be as important as the runs that get added in the process, but with two days to play and fifteen wickets to fall you’d have to assume there’ll be a result. The scoring rate seems to be around three an over, so if England last to drinks you’d figure the total will be around 280, and if they make it to lunch you can probably pencil in 330.

Keep on adding around fifty an hour until the innings closes and deduct Australia’s 32 run advantage on the first knock and there you’ll have the target. On that basis if England make it to lunch you’d have to assume they’re close to home safe.

As far as the chase goes you’d have to look at another big innings from Rogers if we’re going to mount a serious chase. That’s fine, he’ll be batting to ensure an ongoing role in the short to medium term future.

Warner may or may not be capable of grinding, so we’ll see whether he can get patience, shot selection and stickability together. If he can bat long he’s capable of murdering anything loose, so if the head can go down...

Khawaja needs to deliver an innings similar to the one he managed on a minefield at Bellerive early in the last Australian season, and while you’d assume he’s still safe for the final Test here he’s definitely batting for his place in the side over the next three innings.

There aren’t too many question marks over Clarke, but Smith will also be looking to secure a place in the longer term, while we’ll just have to wait and see what happen with Watson’s groin as far as batting goes. On that basis the longer the top order can bat the better it has to look as far as he’s concerned.

So, with two days to go, we’ve got plenty to look at. What we don’t need are too many additional questions

Lords: The Wash Up

It’s probably delusional to think that we were right in this game up to that LBW referral, but I think it’s fair to suggest that things would have been at least slightly different if it hadn’t been made.

The Rogers LBW would have been referred, Hughes wouldn’t have come to the crease when he did and mightn’t have gone as quickly as he did and things might, possibly, have been different. We would, just after lunch, have been One-for with two referrals in hand.

As it was, shortly after lunch we were three-for, with none, and that, I think was where things moved out of the challenge and response ebb and flow of a competitive game and the tide started running heavily in one direction.

It’s probably even more delusional to suggest things might become more competitive at Old Trafford, but if they do it’ll be down to the batsmen getting something resembling their collective act together.

There’s not a lot of chopping and changing that can be done at the moment. The only spare batsman on hand is Cowan, and with the A Team in roughly the same time zone in South Africa there might be someone who sticks his hand up and says Hey, pick me. That may or may not be Warner, but it doesn’t alter a fairly straightforward situation in the here and now.

The batting resources are the six from Lords plus Cowan, and the only one who’s safe is Clarke, and that safety only lasts as long as his back does.

Becoming competitive, on the other hand, will require batting time and accumulating runs, so anyone who can do that is giving himself the best chance of holding down a place in the medium to long term, so let’s look at the candidates one by one.

Rogers, in two games, hasn’t done a lot with the bat but can stay for Old Trafford and possibly beyond since he’s out to prove (or should be out to prove) he’s a prospect for the Australian summer rather than a bloke who’s been drafted in to plug a weakness because he’s experienced in English conditions.

Khawaja has, IMHO, the rest of the series to establish that he has what it takes at Test level. It’s not as if he’s going to be facing a bunch of pie chuckers. England are out to knock us over, and they’re not going to be doing anyone any favours, so if Khawaja can stick there and score runs he’s there for the medium to long term.If he doesn’t he’s got the early part of the Shield season to make a case for retaining his place.

You can say the same thing as far as Hughes is concerned. There has been plenty of criticism of his technique, and it’ll be under the microscope for the rest of the series. If it comes through he stays. If it doesn’t, he’s got to perform at Shield level early in the domestic season.

Smith is a slightly different case since he can bowl. He might not be a front line bowler at the moment, but you can possibly class him as a batting all-rounder. If he does a bit with the bat and can continue picking up the odd wicket he might be useful.

Then, of course, there’s the difficult question of Watson. That’s only a difficult question because he’s been allowed to dictate his own fate for a little too long. You might want to question a little in that last statement, but it’s fairly clear that if he holds his place opening, one more LBW for not many without a substantial score between now and when it comes will see him out of the opening role, at which point he’ll start making pronouncements about being needed to bowl.

There’s a fairly obvious case for Cowan to take his place, though if he does, I doubt the Watson ego would handle a spot lower down the batting order and it becomes a case of who gets dropped to allow a bloke who’s promised far more with the bat than he’s actually delivered.

Look below Haddin at Seven and it’s fairly obvious we’ve got a useful tail, but selections there are going to depend on fitness, so you can leave that side of the equation to a case of Agar at Eight and we’ll see how things look from there.

If Agar were to come on a little more with the bat you could make a case, what with the lower order consistently pitching in with runs and all, for shifting him up to Seven, playing an extra bowler (Lyon?) and we wouldn’t be needing Watto at all.

That, however, is a little bit premature right at this point in time, though it may well be an option at some point in the future.

There’s a county game between now and Old Trafford, and you’d reckon (or at least I would) that everyone will get a bat there (except, possibly, Clarke) with Lyon, Bird and Faulkner getting a trundle.

Anyway, that’s the way it looks after the morning walk and a glance at a score card that revealed an LBW 20 to Watson, fifties to Khawaja and Clarke and runs at the end to Pattinson. One notes we were 3-36, got a partnership between Khawaja and Clarke, lost three quick wickets and had Haddin and the tail add 99 for the last four wickets.

Seems to be about par for the course, really, so it’s a matter of seeing whether anyone in the first six can put his hand up and claim a place in the long term picture.

Between the time I set out for the walk and the time I got home, this rather interesting article (The rotting of Australian cricket) appeared on Cricinfo, raising the regular issue of the decline of the Shield competition as an avenue that produces quality batsmen.

It may be, rather than chopping and changing in quick succession, a case of giving the Khawajas, Smiths and whoever else is drafted in to the Test side an extended run at Test level, because if there’s anything there at all it’s more likely to be developed in the furnace of Test cricket than it is at the domestic level.

The astute reader will, of course, have noted the names of Khawaja and Smith rather than Watson, Hughes, Rogers and Cowan in the previous paragraph. One or more of those four may well have a part to play in the short to medium term, but a successful side in the long term will be built around the next generation of bats who won’t, as far as things look at present, be mastering their trade on (in the words of that Cricinfo article):

sporting or worse surfaces, as state teams chase the outright results required to reach the Shield final ... a litany of low-scoring matches and bowlers celebrating far more often than they did during the relatively run-laden 1990s.

Anyway, that's the way it looked on the walk this morning, and Mr Brettig's article offered a degree of confirmation...

Lords Day 1

I’ve been banging on for a while about the need for Australia’s batsmen to work on their bowling a bit, and Michael Clarke’s decision to hand the ball to Steve Smith at the start of the 76th over might just suggest there’s something in that suggestion.

Clarke’s not afraid to try things, and is equally disinclined to persevere with something that’s not working, which would tend to explain the decision to hand the ball to Watson for the fifth over, a decision that was rewarded with the wicket of Cook, who, interestingly, walked where certain other individuals may have been tempted to linger and discuss a referral.

That suggests a reasonably hard-nosed attitude and a fair aptitude for assessing the chance of success.

I’d been inclined to favour Bird over Harris as the replacement for Starc, but the man they call Rhino definitely delivered. Two early wickets (Root and Pietersen) and the one that broke a 99-run partnership is a fair return for twenty economical overs. The question, of course, is how long you can keep him going, and the question of who to bowl if he breaks down comes into the equation as well.

That, of course, is one of the reasons for the everybody should be able to roll their arm over and send down something reasonable proposition.

With half the side used yesterday it’s also interesting that Pattinson’s eighteen overs were the least impressive contribution with the ball, though one notes the peculiar conditions that apply when you’re bowling at Lords.

For the uninitiated there’s an eight foot drop in height from one square boundary to the other, so the ground has the sort of built in slope that would long since have disappeared in a renovation/reconstruction project anywhere other than the fabled home of cricket.

Pattinson was wayward early, which accounted for Watson’s introduction to the crease. His twelve overs were about where you’d want them on a day when the workload was shared fairly evenly among the main quicks. I’ve always held that one of the benefits of Bowling Watto’s presence in the side is the fact that he saved the other blokes from overwork without any significant drop in aggression, pace or intensity.

Siddle and Harris did the workhorse bit fairly well, but it wasn’t a day when the attack really hit the heights after that impressive score line of 3 for 28 at the end of the sixth over.

From that point Trott and Bell fought back well (as you’d expect). Bell, in particular, has a fair degree of gritty stickability and scores at a reasonable rate as well. Trott’s in much the same mould, so while you’d like to get them cheaply you’ve got to expect fairly stiff resistance so it’s a case of keep it tight and wait for the opportunity, which arrived with a catch in the deep to dispose of Trott.

At that point, 4-127 in the thirty-fourth over, having gone to lunch at 3-80 off twenty-six, things looked to be swinging back Australia’s way, but a 144-run partnership between Bell and Bairstow had England looking good in the run down to the new ball, which is where Smith came into the action.

There’d been the regulation bit of bad luck (or whatever) back in the forty-ninth over with Bairstow bowled off what ended up being ruled a no ball after extensive forensic investigation. There wasn’t much in it, and if it hadn’t hit the stumps and attracted the umpire’s attention on the big screen as the batsman went to leave, it would probably have been counted as a perfectly legal delivery.

Back to the decision to bowl Smith.

In these circumstances, with a substantial partnership, the new ball imminent and not much longer to go, it’s the classic time to try something, and it would be handy to have a few options now that Clarke’s back seems to have taken his left arm tweakers out of the equation.

It had been Watson and Siddle, who’d just come back replacing Pattinson who might need a brief spell before taking the new ball and Clarke had been working the changes already, with short spells indicating a willingness to experiment and see what we can manage to come up with.

Handed the ball, Smith delivers four dots, concedes a four and picks up the prize scalp off the last ball, caught at slip off a perfectly pitched leggie.

Siddle bowls again, Smith gets another over, which goes for three, Siddle bowls a maiden and Smith picks up a second wicket off a full toss at the start of his third over. Bairstow pops the ball back for a caught and bowled, and Smith has his sixth Test wicket, five of which have been taken at Lords.

At that point Clarke could have taken the new ball, but with Smith doing what he was doing, why would you? While you’d prefer the bowler to land them, that wicket’s a reminder you don’t always need to.

At 6-279 Siddle delivers a maiden, Smith has another go, and it yields a four. Harris comes on preparing to take the new ball, Smith gets a third, caught behind and with Anderson in as night watchman to protect Broad it’s time to see what the new ball can do.

As it turns out, two doses of the new pill take the score on to 7-289 at stumps.

The key point here is that little cameo from Smith (6 overs, 1 maiden, 3 for 18) has things set up very nicely for the resumption tomorrow. The new pill is just two overs old, Pattinson and Harris will be fresh and if we pick up a quick wicket, at eight-for and Swann still to come, you’d have to think Broad can’t do all that much damage.

My Day One Par Score is around 6 for 320. On that basis, Australia definitely finishes the day with a nose in front with the prospect of a quick conclusion to the innings and the chance to (hopefully) bat all day to set things up...

Outlook: Definitely bullish.

Trent Bridge Day 5: The Entrails Part 1

Putting issues like walking and the Decision Review System to one side, if we can get that close playing at those levels I definitely like our chances of heading out of The Oval with the urn in hand, and if we can’t quite manage that I reckon we’re looking good to have the prize reclaimed by the end of the Australian summer.

I’m not in the business of assigning percentages to the opposition, though I’m fairly definite in saying England were playing somewhere beyond 100% back in 2005. That’s an easy call. They were playing out of their skins, far better than they, or anyone else, had a right to expect.

So I’m not sure about the level of performance from this England side in that particular Test, but I’d rate our batting somewhere between 75 and 80% and the bowling somewhere between 85 and 90. There’s room for substantial improvement with the bat and a significant lift with the ball and we still only fell 14 runs short.

Pattinson, Starc, Siddle and Agar may well be our best specialist bowling quartet, but there’s room for improvement in the lines we bowl and the percentage of deliveries we force their batsmen to play at. If Trent Bridge is a sign of the surfaces we’re going to see through the rest of the English summer we’re not going to see anything resembling bowler friendly conditions unless weather and atmospherics intervene so attack off stump, get the length right and we’re going to be a big show.

Looking at the English bowling, this particular quartet is handy, and they under bowled Broad in the first dig after he got collected in the shoulder. There may be room for improvement there, but not having seen enough of them in the past it’d difficult to judge. There’s no doubting Anderson’s class, but I think there’s a fair gap between this group and their 2005 combo, which was boosted by the Flintoff all rounder factor.

If you scratch your head and wonder why we get our knickers in a knot looking for a Botham or Flintoff, take a look at our lineup and ask yourself how good it would look with Watson assuming a fair proportion of the workload. Four overs in the first innings and fifteen in the second when his four colleagues were all in the thirties doesn’t rank as a fair proportion of the workload from where I’m sitting.

At his best he’s not far behind the best of them for pace and aggression, which is why I’ve never been happy about having him open the batting, but that, it seems, is where he’ll be staying for the foreseeable future, so there you go.

The batting is the department where there’s the most room for improvement, and the first thing I’d do is issue an edict that an unsuccessful referral will result in a thousand dollar fine. No, make that ten thousand. Let’s see an end to the speculative or opportunistic referral, and limit them to setting the absolute howlers right rather than allowing a batsman who’s made a mistake the possibility of a lifeline.

At the moment it seems to be a case of maybe I can get away with one here rather than hang on a minute, that decision was wrong.

I suspect a decline in the number of referrals will result in a decrease in the number of referable decisions, and everyone will end up benefiting.

I also believe that taking out the lifeline will make a couple of our batsmen more responsible for technical deficiencies, and in the case of unsuccessful referrals from Watson I’d double the amount of the fine (apply the same figure to Rogers if you think that’s unfair, but Watto seems like the sort of bloke who’d be likely to blow the whole allocation within the first ten overs, which, to me, is another reason I’d prefer to see him down the order.

Having whizzed Warner off to Zimbabwe and South Africa, where he’ll get more time in the middle against better attacks than an English county side resting key players will throw up, and with Khawaja as the other specialist bat in the squad, I’d have him back in the side at three.

That means a batting order that reads Rogers, Watson, Khawaja, Clarke, Smith, Hughes, Haddin, Agar, Pattinson, Siddle, Starc which is, I guess about as good as we can muster at the moment and puts Hughes and Smith under the spotlight with a chance to cement their places over the next two or three Tests, which is fair enough in my book.

Any changes in the bowling lineup would be slotted in after Starc.

That’s my take on what’s gone down at Trent Bridge, and having allowed myself the ineluctable luxury of sleeping in until nine-thirty this morning, it’s one that hasn’t been influenced by at length cogitations on the morning walk or extensive perusals of opinions expressed in the press and over on Cricinfo.

We might be taking a squiz at those tomorrow, and casting an eye forward to Lords on Wednesday and/or Thursday. Stay tuned...

Trent Bridge Day 2

One swallow doesn’t make a summer, one innings doesn’t create a career, and one decision doesn’t determine the outcome of a Test match.

Let’s turn our attention to that last point while everybody’s rhapsodising over Ashton Agar’s rather remarkable debut innings, shall we?

Umpiring decisions determine the direction in which things will develop, and while English supporters can complain all they like about the third umpire’s decision that allowed Agar’s innings to continue, I’ll respond with inconclusive and benefit of the doubt. The English commentators on the radio were quite outspoken about on the line being out, but I reckon there was a smidgen of doubt and the batsman’s entitled to it.

Maybe that one balanced up the Rogers LBW, which was one of the things that had landed us in that little nine-for predicament.

Predictably, there’s a degree of controversy about the Trott LBW, and rightly so, because it’s something that’s happening off the field affecting what goes down on it, but TV broadcasters have been fiddling with things to suit themselves for yonks, Hot Spot is their technology, anyway, and something like this was always likely to happen, so Murphy’s Law kicks in about here.

You know Murphy’s Law: Whatever can go wrong will go wrong, and when it does go wrong it will go wrong at the worst possible moment.

And if anyone’s going to argue about that one, I’ll have a go at the rather remarkable passage of play about half an hour into the day when the ball, which had been going gun barrel straight, started reversing.

Now, I’m not going to use the word cheating here, and I’m not necessarily suggesting the dark art of bringing reverse swing into play equates to ball tampering, but there’s something very sus about this from where I’m sitting.

Yes, Anderson and company are very good at getting the ball into the state where it will reverse, and it’s quite possible the means through which this is achieved is totally legitimate. The interesting thing, at least as far as I can see, is that this ability to reverse is a temporary thing, and it seems to be something that can be countered by affecting the state of the ball through the agencies of willow and concrete.

With Australia having lost 5 for 9 in about half an hour, the reverse seemed to remove itself from the equation. Strange.

But all that, of course, is secondary to the big issue here, and that’s the fact that Agar’s 98 and the 163 run tenth wicket partnership have set things up for an interesting Day Three.

Exactly where that goes is anyone’s guess, but I suspect that, on this track at least, chasing anything much over 150 batting last is going to be difficult. Given the current situation, where England are, effectively, 2 for 15 that would involve taking 8 for 135 in the first two sessions tonight, and if we can do that, with our batting surrounded by rather severe question marks, maybe a target of 150 will turn out to be just a tad too high.

Time will tell, as it will with young Mr Agar, who displayed a remarkable maturity in a tricky situation. He certainly doesn’t appear to have the same technical issues some of the other bats have, and for the moment I reckon he can expect an extended run batting Eight from here on.

He’ll need to deliver with the ball as well, but there’s definitely a possibility of a spin bowling all-rounder, which raises some interesting possibilities if he can show form with the ball and continue to post significant scores with the bat.

Possibly he could step up a place or two in the order, but I wouldn’t be looking any higher than Seven, possibly with Haddin at Six, in a situation where you wanted to play an extra spinner and still have three quicks because Watto doesn’t bowl much any more.

Or maybe because Watto hasn’t been able to deliver the runs consistently enough to hold his place.

Interestingly, and I’m not suggesting we’re looking at another Sobers, Imran or Hadlee, most of the great all-rounders have started as specialist bowlers whose batting has moved them up into the middle order.

Without getting ahead of ourselves, let’s wait and see how things pan out. You can predict the inevitable slump in performances as the bowling fraternity work him out and identify weaknesses and technical points that can be attacked, but he looks like someone who’ll add a welcome degree of flexibility.

As far as the rest of the day’s play goes Hughes showed a commendable degree of grit and stickability, while Smith and Haddin both had me scratching my head at the apparent abandonment of the old conventional wisdom involving the placement of the front foot and the subsequent position of the head.

That, I would suggest, m’lud, is a key issue in dealing with the ball when it’s reversing since it’ll probably close the gate between bat and pad (and quite possibly allow the adjustment that’ll get the ball hitting the middle rather than snicking the inside or outside edge).

As far as Day Three and the eventual outcome is concerned, the big question is going to involve the size of the target, and whether we can somehow cobble together more than a hundred out of the combination of Rogers (who I see as the key), Watson and Cowan, both of whom need to deliver big time in the not too distant future.

Chasing more than 150 looks to be rather tricky for this side in these conditions, but if One, Two and Three can get the total past the ton, and my suspicions about the ephemeral nature of the reverse elements is correct, anything less than, maybe, 250 may well be doable.

And, as noted yesterday, time will tell.

Trent Bridge Day 1

So, I hear you ask in your relentless quest for knowledge, what have we learned from that little lot?

The first thing we’ve learned, at least as far as The Little House of Concrete is concerned, is that Hughesy needs to hunker himself down in The Office’s comfortable chair before the first ball is bowled, with the radio tuned to the ABC commentary and the dressing gown handy in case we need a little added warmth in the wee hours. We’ve got fortifieds from Baileys of Glenrowan to warm things up on the inside, and the dressing gown will do for the exterior, particularly the legs on nights that tend, with the wind chill factor and all, to be crisp.

Expecting a time lapse between the radio call and the on screen action I was sitting at the computer last night when Madam appeared, announced she was watching the first bit and settled into the comfy chair. At one for a few more than I would have preferred and the bowling leaving a bit to be desired, I thought it was time to try Hughesy’s almost foolproof method of ensuring something happens by wandering off to bed.

This quite often produces results, but I don’t recall too many instances where the stratagem has proved quite as successful, delivering no less than thirteen wickets, but we’re getting ahead of the narrative here.

So, what did we learn?

Let’s start with the Australian team selection, particularly the decision to hand Ashton Agar his baggy green, the 434th player selected for Australia, and the twelfth youngest to get the honour. If you need to catch up on the Agar story you can do so here, but the selection suggests a degree of horses for courses in the selection stakes.

The thinking appears to involve Kevin Pietersen’s perceived weakness against left arm orthodox bowling, and comments from Lehmann (here) suggest the spinner’s spot isn’t completely cut and dried.

More particularly, with Lyon bowling offies, Agar’s left arm tweakers and Fawad Ahmed’s leggies it looks like we’ve got three reasonable cards covering the standard spin options. That could make the next tour to India rather interesting.

The other interesting selection issue is, of course, Warner. Rocketing him off to play for Australia A in Zimbabwe (there’s a four game there starting the same day as the Lords Test with the first of two unofficial Tests against South Africa A kicking off a week later) means he might be back on board later in The Ashes series, with  Old Trafford starting on August 1, the Test at Riverside (Durham) kicking off on August 9 and The Oval on August 22.

There are three day tour games against Sussex (between Lords and Old Trafford) and Northamptonshire (leading in to The Oval) so, while Warner would have been able to get some time in the middle there, with Zimbabwe and South Africa A probably guaranteeing a more competitive opposition you’d have to guess he’s still on the periphery of the picture and a chance of figuring in calculations if the existing order fails to deliver.

Then there’s the short term middle order. With Rogers, Watson and Clarke as definites, we needed three names to fill the remaining spots in the first six, and Cowan, Hughes and Smith get the nod. Two lefties and a righty to match the two righties and a lefty, which sort of opens up the right/left combination I mentioned yesterday.

As things have worked out, if Smith and Hughes can go on from here they’ll be cementing their place in the middle order for a while. How long Cowan gets at Three is going to depend on how he goes in the second dig, but if he fails there you’d figure a first ball gozzer here means he’ll have to deliver at Lords to hold Khawaja (and possibly a returning Warner) out for Old Trafford.

At this point crystal ball gazing is a dodgy practice, but you’d have to think that the first session tomorrow will be the key to the rest of the match.

Twenty-one overs into the innings reverse swing should be coming into the equation, so it’s a matter of how Smith, Hughes and Haddin handle it, and how long the tail can wag. Based on revealed form you’d have to be bullish about Siddle, Pattinson and Starc with the bat, with a question mark over Agar at Eleven.

Hughesy’s predictions tend to end up fairly wide of the mark, and a considerable distance from the money, but that’s not going to stop me making them.

Assuming we’re still batting at lunch time that should have us twenty-five to thirty runs behind, and if we’re still there at tea, you’d figure we’d be somewhere between sixty to eighty to the good. Bat on after tea and there’s a fair chance of a lead of a hundred plus, and the bigger the plus the better the chance of a win.

That, of course, is the numerical side of the equation.

From there we’ll need to knock them over for a reasonably low total. Phil Tuffnell was fairly bullish bout the likelihood of the wicket turning square, so you’d figure the more time we can bat, and the bigger the lead, the better the chance of an Australian win.

At the moment, you’d have to say England have their noses in front, but there’s not a great deal in it. I thought we didn’t bowl particularly well in the first session, and didn’t force them to play enough with the new ball. We obviously came back well, but 21 sundries (6 byes, 5 leg byes, 8 wides and 2 no balls, in case you’re interested) in a total of 215 suggest we should have bowled better.

We’d be sitting a bit more comfortably if Rogers was still there, and it’s interesting to speculate what might have happened had umpire Dharmasena given it not out. With the forensics suggesting it might have clipped leg stump, and the Decision Referral System returning an Umpire’s Call, had it been given Not Out and England referred it, things would have been very interesting indeed.

A small matter, perhaps, but games are won and lost on small matters...

Off to Trent Bridge

I think it’s fair to say that what you see depends on what you’re looking for, particularly when it comes to figuring out the significance of what’s just gone down within the line of sight.

When the Australian cricket team takes the field I’m looking for a 5-0 result from a team that’s playing at 100%. Not that I expect to see it too often when we’re playing a top rated side in their home conditions, but that’s what I’m looking for, because it probably means there’s not much that could have been done better.

On that basis, of course, Hughesy’s hardly likely to describe the 2005 Ashes series as one of the greatest ever. It’s different if you’re looking at it from a different perspective, of course, and a series that goes down to the wire will certainly keep the spectators engaged for the duration.

Closely fought series are definitely worth watching, but, unfortunately, the dialectical dynamics of sport mean they don’t occur too often.

The way I look at these things (and here I’m setting up a framework that I can use to analyse what goes down over the next six and a half weeks) fairly early on in a two team event one side gains an ascendancy and the other side responds. Sometimes they respond strongly enough to gain the ascendancy, in which case it’s up to the other side to wrest it back, and that sort of pendulum swing continues until one side is no longer capable of turning the tide, and at that point you get a blow out in the score line.

To me, the great thing about Test cricket is the fact that you’ve got five days to act out that sequence of challenge and response.

Let’s talk hypotheticals for a minute.

Based on my par score scenario (Day One, batting side on 8 for round about 300), which I see as even stevens it’s up to the bowling side to wrap things up for something in the vicinity of 350, after which they get their turn at the crease and hopefully, given a decent batting wicket and the best of the conditions, end up somewhere around 4 for 250 at the end of Day Two).

At that point we’re still level pegging at the end of the day, but you’re still going to have those pendulum swings as the batting side builds a partnership and the bowling side gets a wicket.

By the end of Day Three in this scenario, your side that batted first should be back in, attempting to reel in a deficit of around a hundred, and would hopefully have accomplished that for the loss of one or two wickets, which means they’ve got Day Four to accumulate a target and Day Five to ensure the other side doesn’t reach it.

Ideally the victory target is reached inside the last half hour of Day Five and whoever bats Eleven on the batting side is at the crease.

Things rarely fall out that way, of course, but take that scenario as a basis, repeat five times and you’re going to have a cracker of a series because even if the eventual score line reads 5-0 every game has gone the distance, and both sides have been right in it until the death.

Anyway, that’s Hughesy’s definition of a close series, and if you’re looking at a score line that reads two-all as you go into Game Five I’m willing to concede that you’re probably looking at one of the greatest series ever.

Maybe I’ve been spoiled because the first Test series I remember consciously following was that great series between Australia and the West Indies in 1960-61 that started with the Tied Test and included the nail-biting draw in Adelaide as Slasher Mackay and Lindsay Kline held out against Wes Hall and Lance Gibbs.

I don’t recall too many series over the subsequent fifty years that went close to matching it.

With back to back Ashes series kicking off tonight, somewhere during the next day or two we’ll have one side gaining the ascendancy, and, hopefully, from my point of view, it’ll be Australia.

At this point it’s time for Hughesy’s favourite metaphor when it comes to these situations. It’s like a loose set of floorboards where the nails that secure things in place keep popping their heads up, and whoever’s standing on top of them bangs them back down. Eventually the nails will either stop popping back up or they’ll all come loose and the bloke with the hammer will fall through the cracks.

When I look at 2005, I see Australia as the bloke standing on the floor after the First Test, with a whole pile of nails springing out of their nail holes on the first morning of the Second, which put England on a roll that we weren’t able to counter, though it was a very close run thing.

Given the current state of affairs you might be disinclined to make a prediction, but I think things are going to be very close, which will probably mean a 5-0 score line to the home side in six and a half weeks’ time, but I’m reasonably upbeat.

I like Lehmann as coach, and I think we’ll see a much more focussed side than we’ve seen in recent series.

I like Clarke as an innovative captain, and I suspect we’ll see something like the short midwicket Alan Border regularly set in place against Graham Gooch in 1989. That, and the suggestion that Terry Alderman bowled out-swingers, did a lot to secure a famous victory in that series.

You can see the mind games already in the decision not to announce the actual side until the morning of the game. I liked that yesterday, and I like it even more when I read articles like this one.

Back to that 1989 field placing, the short midwicket had Gooch thinking something along the lines of “What are they doing? I don’t hit the ball in the air through there. Or do I?” The uncertainty that came with Or do I? set things up so Alderman, who, remember was supposed to be swinging the ball, could regularly clean up England’s premier bat with balls that went more or less gun barrel straight.

You can expect something along these lines from Clarke through this series if comments made here are anything to go by.

I like Rogers as opener, and, according to this article he brings a little bit more than a heap of runs and current form to the side. There’s that eternal question of how the English bowler gets the Dukes ball to swing when we don’t. Rogers, interestingly, may be part of the solution to what has been a thorny problem.

And, on that basis, I like the fact that we’ve got half a dozen fully fit bowlers on tour seemingly ready to fire.

I expect Lyon to do surprisingly well, and someone out of Hughes, Khawaja, Smith and Warner to nail down a secure place in the Australian middle order for the next couple of years, and don’t dismiss Cowan or Hughes as a potential Three if either is tried in that position.

Over the next six and a half weeks there are a lot of players in the Australian side with a lot to play for and a coach who has, I think, the potential to ensure a couple of them really deliver. That might not be enough to bring back the urn after The Oval, but time will, as they say, tell.