Hobart 2012: Day Three

Yesterday, being rather bullish about an Australian victory, I concluded:

On the other hand, although we often suspect there's a script in operation, real life tends to have fate lurking around the corner slipping the lead into the boxing glove, so I suspect both declaration scenarios will prove inoperative...

The lead, predictably came in the form of yet another breakdown from yet another Australian fast bowler, and all scenarios promptly went out the window when Hilfenhaus trudged off the field shortly before the Frockster and the Affianced arrived to whisk us off to Monte's for lunch.

An hour to get there, an hour for lunch and an hour to come back took a fair chunk out of the day, and when the neighbour fronted seeking assistance with a network problem that coincided with the Siddle burst that wound up the Sri Lankan innings, so I didn't get to see much of the day's proceedings, and was thinking of giving a Day Three blog entry the big flick pass until I spotted this article in this morning's online edition of The Australian.

I'm not in the habit of grabbing quotes off newspapers for blog entries, but in this case I couldn't help myself.

Team physiotherapist Alex Kountouris said the spate of injuries was a complex problem.

That was followed by a longer quote that could've been cut and pasted, and a listing of the injury toll covering Pattinson, Cummins, Harris, Hastings, Hazlewood, Copeland, Cutting and Mitchell Marsh and goes on to point out that Kountouris has completed a number of studies on fast bowlers along with the team doctors, and that their research suggests anyone under 25 is almost guaranteed to break down once a year.

Hmmm.

Looking down the list of walking wounded there are a couple of side strains apart from the one that took out Hilfie yesterday, back soreness and stress fractures and a serious hamstring injury (Marsh).

So there are recurring themes, and we need to figure out what's causing them. I spent most of the morning walk contemplating these matters and around half way around had reduced the possibilities to three basic factors. The actual cause of each injury issue probably lies in the interaction of the three of them, and that, I guess, is where the complexity comes in.

One possibility, of course, is that it's wear and tear, which is the explanation that brings out the it was different in the old days crowd. Wear and tear becomes a management issue, and we're already heading along that path, but the injuries keep coming.

We've been very careful to limit the workloads of kids on the way up, and we're a long way from the times when there were no bowling limits and I saw twelve-year-old kids sending down as many as twenty-two overs in a fifty over game. Workload limits have progressively been lowered, which may be a contributory factor to the current situation where you might question the core strength of some of these blokes, but those limits aren't going to go away.

And, in any case, if there are going to be wear and tear issues they're probably also going to reflect problems with the other two likely areas of concern.

One of those concerns bowling technique, and the other involves physiology and some of the associated biomechanics. There's almost certainly a degree of interaction between those as well, but let's look at the two of them separately.

You'd reckon that the technical issues that were identified with the bowling action would have been well and truly sorted out by now, but they might be worth a cursory glance just to remind ourselves of things that used to be important around thirty years ago.

At that point, there was a problem with what was termed a mixed action, which was seen to be a contributory factor in stress fractures and involved the correlation between the use of the front arm and the position of the back foot as the bowler lands in his delivery stride. The theory was that if you bowled in the classical side on manner your back foot should land parallel to the popping crease and your front arm should be high and come down straight rather than falling across the body.

If you've got a more front on action (a la Malcolm Marshall) your feet should have been pointing down the track. Land with your back foot parallel, the theory went, and you're setting yourself up for back problems.

Bowling techniques, of course, are an individual thing, and no two actions are exactly the same, but I suspect there are little issues that creep in and need to be addressed, but the key issue in this regard is who spots them and how they get addressed.

And, more significantly, when they get addressed.

There are a number of highly rated coaches out there doing their thing at various levels and it goes without saying they're not going to agree on everything. Dennis Lillee might look at someone's action and say it's fine while, say, Geoff Dymock might look at James Pattinson (and there was something on the ABC radio about this, so it's not something that I just plucked out of the air) and identify an issue here that might have implications there.

Given the nature of the beast, anyone trying to incorporate all of this often-contradictory advice is going to be reminded that a camel is a horse designed by a committee, but if there are highly rated coaches out there and they're identifying things that seem likely to be causing an issue these things should be noted.

Beyond the wear and tear and technical issues, there's the issue of basic physiology and the way it interacts with the bowling action, and here, I suspect, is where the problem lies, particularly if you're looking at the up and coming quickie and suggesting kids today don't have the same core strength they used to have.

The obvious way to overcome this is to set them to work in the gym, which is, I think, fine in theory, but tends to put muscle and bulk in areas where it wouldn't normally be, or places where there wouldn't normally be so much of it.

The other factor that might be contributing is the fact that bowlers in the modern era are trying to do too much in terms of variety of deliveries. Time was you had your quickie bowling a stock ball with one or two variations, but in the era of Twenty20 cricket I've heard suggestions that you need to be able to send down six different deliveries each over to keep the batsman guessing which could well be a recipe for disaster as far as the physiology is concerned.

But enough of that. With Sri Lanka having clawed their way back into the match with 336 in reply to 450, and with 27 added to the 114 run margin, that's a handy lead, and you'd expect, at around a hundred a session, under normal circumstances we'd be looking at around a 250 lead by lunch, 350 by tea and 400 an hour or so into the final session.

Allow for the extra half hour to make up for time lost through rain, and you'd adjust those (and modify again with Warner at the crease and Hughes to come). Hughesy's prediction: 290 ahead by lunch, 410 at tea. Half an hour into the final session before a declaration that sets the visitors 450.

So let's see how the wheels fall off this time...

Hobart 2012: Day Two

Apart from the rain interruptions it's hard to avoid the conclusion that Day Two in Hobart went pretty much according to the script, though for a while I wasn't sure whose script we were using.

When Clarke went early it could have been Sri Lanka's, the one that called for a brisk run through the Australian tail, presumably by removing Wade before he got started and then would have involved keeping Hussey off strike and maximising the exposure of Eight, Nine, Ten and Jack to Herath while maintaining pressure at the other end.

Instead, Wade got started, Mr Cricket stuck around and the scoring rate ticked over nicely enough to add around 150 before Clarke could declare with enough time for a decent go at the Sri Lankan top order before stumps.

Actually, you have to suspect the declaration came, more or less (and allowing for the extended playing time to make up for the rain delays) where the Australian script would have called for it.

Half an hour before tea would, after all, give you two goes at them with the new ball, one short sharp nasty session before the Tea break, and the two hours after it, and if they'd been on the field all along and scoring around 3.5 to 4 an over (and that'd be a conservative figure when you're batting for a declaration off around 55 overs) they'd have been looking at around 500 to 520 as a target.

On that basis 450 was a pretty fair compromise in the runs/time equation.

The breakthrough didn't come before the break, though there were signs it wasn't far away (then again, with the new ball there are always signs it's lurking just around the corner) but Hilfenhaus got Karunaratne caught behind in the third over after the resumption (tick the script item that indicates local boy gets the breakthrough).

The Australian script also called for an early departure from Sangakarra, and Hussey's catch in the gully fitted nicely with the welcome back workhorse Siddle bit that would have been in the script as well.

2/42 became 3/70 when Watson trapped Jayawardene in front. Decision reviewed, umpire's verdict upheld probably also featured in the script and having Lyon strike early (he'd already bowled an over before tea in a neat little move that squeezed in another one before the break) was another box ticked.

With an early start to Day Three you'd guess 4/87 with Dilshan on 50 and Mathews next in will translate into around 200-240 all out just before tea, raising an interesting question about enforcing the follow on.

The Michael Clarke as aggressive captain script would  call for enforcement, but I'd guess we'll bat again with a lead of over 200, declare midway through Monday and have four and a half sessions to knock them over again.

On the other hand, there's a give the boys an extra day off with close to a week and a half till Boxing Day factor that'd always be likely to tempt Clarke to enforce the follow on, and would also do a bit to (a) establish dominance for the rest of this series and (b) deliver a result that might be worth a bit more in the calculations regarding the rankings leading into The Ashes next year.

On that front one notes India are 8/297 in reply to England's 330 at the end of Day Three in Nagpur, which will make for an interesting two days over that way. A 1-0 series win away from home will presumably boost the England ranking, but one suspects there isn't enough time to build a lead and roll India a second time, so you'd guess 2-0 is out of the question.

One notes that three days have yielded around 630 runs and 18 wickets, so from those figures you'd guess England will set out to bat time, maybe declare with something to bowl at just after lunch on the last day, maybe setting a target of 300 in just under two sessions, which could be interesting.

Particularly if the follow on is enforced in Hobart and proceedings are brought to a close midway through Monday…

On the other hand, although we often suspect there's a script in operation, real life tends to have fate lurking around the corner slipping the lead into the boxing glove, so I suspect both declaration scenarios will prove inoperative...

Hobart 2012: Day One

I'm not 100% sure what to make of Day One in Hobart, but then it's early days in a series against (largely) unknown opposition.

At least they are to me, since the only cricket I get to watch on TV comes via Free to Air and is, therefore, what Channel Nine feels inclined to dish up.

So, no coverage of tours to the subcontinent, the West Indies or virtually anywhere other than England, and definitely no coverage of a Test series that involves anyone other than Australia. Sure, there are a few familiar names in the touring squad, but we haven't been as assiduous as we might be in following the international results.

With South Africa, England, Australia and Pakistan above them in the Test rankings you're looking at Two or Three plays Six, a scenario that means anything less than a series win will affect the home side's current ranking at a time when England seem to be making a pretty fair fist of dealing with the same sort of Indian side we saw out here last summer, but playing at home rather than being subjected to the rigours of touring (tongue in cheek there) and unfamiliar pitches that offer significantly more bounce than they're used to.

With everything being projected towards The Ashes in mid-2013 and again over the New Year, even something like a subtle shift between Two and Three in the rankings will be something that'll get exploited.

But that's bye the bye. What counts at the moment is getting a handle on how this side is shaping up, and this is where the I'm not 100% sure what to make of it factor comes in.

You can, however put a big tick beside Michael Clarke's decision to bat after winning the toss.

It probably comes as no surprise to learn you don't get first class cricket at Bellerive early in the season, and it was the ninth match of the Shield season before Tasmania got a home game. That was against the Redbacks, who were bundled out for 112 in the first dig, rolled the home side for 138, replied with 237 and rolled the Tigers again for 196 with the quicks doing most of the damage.

The  home side didn't do that well against Queensland either, losing by an innings and 123 after being dismissed for 95 in twenty-five overs.Khawaja's 138 on that track in a game where the second highest score was 49 and twelve out of thirty-three scores failed to reach double figures was one of the reasons I liked him for the spot left vacant by Punter's retirement.

And when the Warriors got there in late November they were rolled for 67 in the first dig.

On that basis you'd quite possibly be inclined to send the opposition in.

Sri Lanka, on the other hand, don't have the greatest pace attack in the world, and if you can't handle them in arguable bowl first conditions you're going to struggle against the likes of Anderson and Broad in similar circumstances.

On that basis 4/299 off the full ninety looks like a workmanlike performance, and you'd definitely rate the catch that claimed Watson as one of the better ones you've seen, but that's the sort of chance that tends to go to hand and stick in the heat of a battle that counts. Well bowled, sharp catch, tough luck.
And there seemed to be a bit of reverse going on with the one that claimed Hughes for 86, which is fair enough when the over count's climbing towards sixty, but is, nonetheless, worrying in an Ashes scenario.

But then we come to the openers.

I didn't see anything of Cowan's 136 at the Gabba, but 10 and 29 in Adelaide, and a duck in the first dig in Perth don't exactly fill you with confidence, but, then again  that was against Steyn, Philander, Morkel and Kleinveldt, and he did chip in with 53 in the second innings.

The shot that got him out this time, however, was ugly. Maybe not ugly enough to have you putting a cross against the name yet, but ugly enough to mean he'll need solid scores in the second innings and in Sydney and Melbourne.

With Hughes in the side, maybe there's room for Khawaja yet…

And the Warner run out was, well, one of those things, but it wasn't one of the things you expect from a pair of batsman who must have spent a fair amount of time at the crease together.

As far as the bowling went, I thought it was fairly obviously Number Six in the pecking order and, in a way reminded me of one of my Bowen schoolboy sides playing Townsville. Given the size of the population hereabouts we were never over-endowed with prodigious talent, and usually had to make do with whoever was in the age group at the time, so the best you could do was to hope to keep things as tight as possible for as long as possible, which is what I thought Sri Lanka did rather well yesterday (apart from the ten no balls, which were close to unforgivable, particularly when you saw the extent to which some of them were overstepping).

Sure, Cowan was a gift and Warner was a bonus at a time when the scoreboard was ticking over at just under four per over, and it was still comfortably under four when Watson and Hughes went.

And they got through the full ninety in the day without going too far into overtime with only seventeen coming from the left arm spinner. On that economy rate, by the way, one notes that while Welegedara claimed the three wickets credited to the bowler he also went for almost five an over off twenty, so the rest of an attack that isn't the strongest one going around sent down seventy for exactly 200. Pretty tidy work, that.

Of course, with Clarke on 70, Hussey 37 with Wade to come and Siddle, Starc, Hilfenhaus and Lyon to follow the wheels could well fall off.
And that applies to both sides.

Hobart 2012: The Lead In

The pursuit of tickets to Bruce Springsteen concerts means that Hughesy's preview of the Hobart Test probably won't be finished by the time play starts at 9:30 Queensland time, but that's fine because the matters that occupied my mind on the pre-Jimbo section of the morning walk hopefully won't be affected by the first session.

One notes a weather forecast suggesting a 50% chance of rain, with possible falls amounting to not very much (0 to 2 mm), so there's a possibility they might not get away on time. That's very much a case of wait and see, as is the composition of the batting order now that they've selected Phil Hughes at the start of the post-Ponting era.

With a top order running Warner, Cowan, Hughes, Watson, Clarke, Hussey, Wade it's a matter of seeing how they go and how long Hussey remains on the scene.

The bowling attack, on the other hand, is probably never going to be resolved to the same degree of certainty, but we'll get to that point a little further down the track.

I would have been inclined to go for Khawaja ahead of Hughes, but then again I haven't seen either of them at the crease this season, and the slotting of a shot-playing opening bat in at Three makes a great deal of sense.

It's quite possible, after all that he'll find himself facing the second ball of the innings, so it makes sense o have someone who can open batting there and, on the other hand, he could find himself coming in half way through the final session at 1/240, a situation where the requirements are slightly different.

Hughes has earned the recall, and I hope he does well.

Watson at Four is aldo a good look since it, as the man himself has pointed out, will allow him to bowl more. This, mind you, is coming from a bloke who saw himself as an opener a while back and wasn't concerned about the bowling bit of the equation. Hmmm….

Clarke sits comfortably at Five, Hussey will continue to be a how much longer question mark at Six, and when he goes that slot is a perfect spot for a newcomer to find his feet.

So the batting, as far as I'm concerned, looks OK.

The bowling, on the other hand, is an entirely different kettle of fish, due to the ongoing injury issue and the question of the rotation policy.

I've got no issue with a rotation policy if it's based on statistics provided they're the right sort of statistics and they're being interpreted correctly with a slight margin for leeway.

The suggestion seems to be that bowlers who send down more than fifty overs in a Test are likely to break down in the next, which would seem to be an issue since the bloke who breaks down delivers an increased workload to the rest of the attack, which would, in turn, bring in the possibility of further breakdowns.

There's also the question of why so many bowlers break down in the first place, but let's set that aside for the moment.


From where I'm sitting a rotation policy is only an issue when you don't have the resources to cover the bloke you're rotating out, and you don't develop those resources without giving the players on the fringe the chance to prove they're good enough. We want a situation where we've got a battery of six to eight fit bowlers we can choose from, and you don't get that without some degree of rotation to bring on the new faces.

Much of the kerfuffle comes back to the decision to rest Siddle and Hilfenhaus from Perth, which came a matter of days after they'd both bowled more than fifty overs trying to win the Test after Pattinson broke down. There was no Watto to bowl there, so let's put that aside for a minute as a necessary precaution against losing Siddle or Hilfenhaus in the longer term.

It wouldn't have been an issue if Pattinson hadn't broken down, so that's one point.

The other one is how you avoid putting any of the quicks into the situation where they're likely to bowl more than fifty in a match.Do that and you're looking after your bowling stocks a lot better.

So let's look at the maths of all this for a minute.

First up, we've got a notional five days with a notional ninety overs to be bowled on each, and you'd anticipate you'd be batting for two of them.

So we're looking at around 180 to 200 overs maximum to be bowled. Four fit bowlers in the lineup would cover that quite adequately. Add Watto to the equation for around four or five spells of no more than three overs each day and you've got that side of things covered, provided the four other bowlers are all fit.

It's when they start to break down that things start to get complicated, so why do they break down?

Now, there's no point in hearkening back to the glory days of Dennis Lillee or Freddie Trueman or whoever and wondering why they don't make 'em like that any more.

There are obvious lifestyle changes that mean kids who grew up in the eighties and nineties don't run around the way they used to, which is one thing. You'd have to suspect kids, and particularly the sort of kid who's likely to grow up to take the new ball, don't have the same robust lifestyle of years gone by.

So there's arguably a base level of fitness and coordination that's not there any more.

One notes that Siddle, if I recall correctly, hails from Gippsland, and probably had a more robust childhood than a kid growing up in suburban Melbourne, particularly if it's a suburb where parents drive their kids to school.

Then there's the move into professional sport where the player doesn't have the need to find gainful employment to pay the bills. Whether Mitchell Johnson's spells in the building industry have anything to do with his cricket fitness may not be important, but it would definitely have meant he'd be out and active for a fair chunk of the day between seven in the morning and four in the afternoon.

Land a gig as a professional athlete and that doesn't apply any more.

But you'll also need to do something to fill in the hours while you're not playing, the ones you would have spent at work earning a crust. You can't play cricket, football or whatever for all those hours, and you can't just sit around and do nothing, so what do you do?

Obvious, isn't it? You go to the gym, where you set about putting on muscle in areas where you wouldn't find it naturally.

And that's muscle that can be injured…

Go to the gym and you'll find plenty of people who know about body building, maybe not to the extent that former Wallaby and Puma Topo Rodriguez did, but still.

Almost twenty-seven years ago I spent the Australia Day long weekend over at Monte's reef Resort, where Wallaby Roger Gould was visiting his girlfriend and avoiding fitness tests being conducted by Alan Jones. Gould's job, as I recall it, had something to do with refrigeration and he's been called to fix a problem, which meant he'd regretfully have to miss the fitness test.

Apparently he wasn't the only Wallaby on that particular flight to Proserpine.

He was looking after the bar on a quiet Friday night, and someone asked him about players who were tough to tackle. Roger referred to the tender spot just under your ribcage on the side, where you can usually inflict a little pain if you can get the fingers in there. Everyone has that potential weakness, but not Topo Rodriguez.

I suspect excessive gym work under the supervision of someone who's more concerned with adding muscle than making sure it's appropriate muscle is an accident waiting to happen.

You have to wonder how many of the fast bowlers' injuries are affecting muscles that normally wouldn't be there or have been developed to a point that wouldn't happen under normal circumstances.

There ate also technical issues, although we've had about thirty years of expert coaching which you'd think would be more than enough to ensure that basic issues that affect bowling actions have been sorted out.

Maybe they have, but at the same time you'd have to suspect there's a degree of over coaching, another off shoot of the professional era where ex-players can find a career path once their playing days are over. I suspect there's a degree of remodelling being applied in situations where a little bit of tweaking is required.

But you need to be doing something to justify that pay packet, don't you?

No, if that no more than fifty overs is the key point, you make sure you're not going to be asking the bloke to trundle down fifty-one, or, if you must ask them to you make sure you're asking a bloke who has shown he probably can.

That's why I'd like to see the likes of Henriques and Christian (there are others around, but let's keep this bit fairly simple) being developed to the point where they could bat in the top seven and deliver some useful overs as well.

That would also have the extra benefit of putting a bit of pressure on Watto to actually deliver rather than promise to.

At the same time, anyone who is looking to secure a batting slot should be looking to develop his bowling to a point where he could send down a handful of useful overs if asked. It might only be four or five while Lyon's wheeling away at the other end and we're waiting for the new ball, but every little bit helps…

Actually, if Watson (twelve to fifteen) and Lyon (twenty-odd) can get through close to forty overs with a bit of help from Clarke, Warner and Hussey or whoever takes his place you'd think your three quicks would be able to slide in under that fifty overs bar, wouldn't you?

And with that, m'lud, I rest my case...

Perth 2012: Day Four

And, in the end, it was as comprehensively clinical as the most pessimistic observers might have feared.

But at least it didn't happen the same way in Brisbane and Adelaide, which would have run towards nightmare territory. That, of course, raises the question of whether the Proteas were happy to accept the draws in the first two Tests because they fancied their chances in Perth but we don't really want to go down that road, do we?

What Perth 2012 does underline, however, is the gap between the current #1 side and everyone else, and between the top three and just about everyone else. The pecking order is, it seems, largely unchanged.

South Africa are opening up a break from the rest of the field and look like maintaining that ranking because it's difficult to see how anyone's going to manage to knock them over at home, and unless they're served up a diet of subcontinental raging turners it's hard to see a comprehensive defeat when they're touring.

Look at the batting lineup and with the emergence of duPlessis and Duminy to come back they've got someone to cover for Kallis when he goes. They still need a top ranked spinner, but in a setting where Steyn, Philander and Morkel are operating, with or without Kallis, Peterson is always going to have a chance since he's the bloke the batsmen are likely to go after.

As I remarked to Jimbo in the walk this morning Clarke and Hussey might have been looking to hit him out of the attack to force Smith to turn to someone else, but if you were in Smith's shoes why would you?

Defending more than 600 over two days it doesn't matter if the spinner goes at a run a ball provided the bats are having a go at him. It'll establish whether the bowler can handle a serious assault, and while the bats are chancing their arm the bowler's always got a chance.

Looking at our batting on the day there wasn't a whole lot to be cheerful about apart from the Starc/Lyon cameo at the end.

Warner went early, and was probably always in danger having to start up twice.

Watson got a pretty thorough working over before getting caught at slip without answering any of the questions about his suitability at Three, which won't come as a surprise to anyone who has watched his progress (or lack thereof) over the years.

I first saw him as a ten-year-old and it was obvious he was expected to develop into something special. He's shown glimpses of that since, but hasn't managed to deliver consistently. Whether he ever will is going to depend on factors that still need to be sorted out. I don't think he's opener material unless he's going to limit the bowling, and he's obviously seen as an important part of the attack, so that's unlikely.

Technically he's probably good enough to slot into Three, but has failed to deliver when he's there, which means he's probably not happy and would prefer to bat somewhere else. That's a problem because, as the captain of my 92 NQ Schoolboys' side remarked, Watto tends to get what he wants.

Actually, what I think he needs is an obvious rival for the all-rounder slot so that he has to knuckle down to hold his place rather than being assured of slotting straight back in as soon as he's over his latest injury.

Much was made of the Protea guard of honour as Ponting walked to the crease but, seriously, you're going to do that, aren't you? The ABC commentary team were referring back to Bradman's last Test appearance, where the English team gave him three cheers and he was bowled second ball, allegedly unable to focus on the ball because he was a bit teary.

I'm not sure about the teary bit, but all the great batsmen have their own ways of setting themselves before the start of their innings, and if there's something you can do to disrupt that you're going to try it, aren't you?

Cowan fell to a fairly obvious trap, playing on instinct and hooking the short one from around the wicket, caught in the deep off Steyn. He'd done his job and should have been looking to go on, but there you go.

Clarke got himself stumped seemingly trying to hit the spinner out of the attack, which is all very well in theory, but in this situation it doesn't seem to have been the smartest option. Here, it didn't matter if Peterson went for 300 because he was always likely to pick up a couple of wickets.

Hussey drove, nicked and got caught behind off Steyn, Wade got caught at short midwicket off Peterson, Johnson caught behind off Philander and Hastings slammed a few off Peterson before getting caught at slip off Morkel.

The Starc/Lyon cameo got itself underway whileI went down the street to follow up on some missing cat sightings, but was never going to do anything more than provide a little bit of light relief at the end of a comprehensive trouncing.

From here, looking towards the Sri Lanka series the big questions involve Ponting's replacement at Four, where Watto fits, how long for Hussey and who, apart from Siddle (and possibly Starc) is going to join Lyon in the four man bowling attack.

My team, pending the Chairman's XI game:

Cowan, Warner, Khawaja, Clarke, Watson, Hussey, Wade, Siddle, Starc, Hilfenhaus, Lyon, Johnston. Hilfie or Johnston for drinks waiter duties...

Perth 2012: Days Two and Three

It's difficult to avoid the conclusion that something happened between the lunch break and the tea break at the WACA on Saturday.

Something definitely happened in the morning session, and something was happening right up to the time the players headed off for lunch. At that point we weren't exactly in the game, but we weren't totally out of it either.

Resuming at 2/33 with nightwatchman Lyon protecting Ponting from the tricky last bit of Day One we weren't looking good, but there was always the prospect of a Warner, Ponting, Clarke, Hussey and Wade led revival. That, after all, is what happened in Brisbane and Perth.

I like to think of Test cricket as a scenario where one side gains a bit of dominance and the other tries to wrest it away. We'd been dominant early on Day One, South Africa had clawed it back by Stumps to be on top for the start of Day Two, and it was up to our batting to get us back into the game, assuming they were good enough to do it.

And, possibly, against any other attack they might have been able to do it.

But not against this South African attack on a wicket that had something in it for the bowlers. It was, in short, the sort of demolition the pessimists among us had dreaded since the start of the Gabba Test.

2/33 became 3/34 (Warner), 4/35 (Lyon), 5/43 (Ponting) and 6/45 (Clarke). At that stage we weren't quite gone for all money but it was close. With Hussey and Wade at the crease there was still a glimmer of hope, and when Hussey went at 7/100 it was, as far as I could see, an exercise in sticking around and getting as close as possible to South Africa's 225, then trying to grab early wickets in the second dig.

Straightforward.

Much of the revival had come through Wade, who'd decided to fight fire with fire by riding his luck, bringing up his 50 at just over a run a ball. He went in for lunch on 60 with the score on 7/118 after 36 overs.

But somewhere between then and stumps something intervened to ensure we were off the boil in that remarkable last session when the Proteas went from 0/24 to 2/230.

Maybe it was something that happened in the dressing room, a chance remark, or an unintended slip of the tongue that got interpreted the wrong way, or a disagreement between a couple of members of the Australian camp.

Maybe it was something that happened in the dining room, assuming there's a common area where both teams and the match officials get stuck into the catering, a passing comment from one of the South Africans, or a swagger that suggested hey, we've got this thing won that threw the collective mind off what should have been the game plan.

I'd like to think it was something like that, but there's always the possibility that it was just one of those off days that most teams encounter, or, equally possible, once Smith and Amla got going the ferocity of the assault left us reeling and unable to come up with a counterpunch.

In any case, the middle session on Saturday presented an almost unarguable case for the intellectual deficiencies of the fast bowling fraternity. I had thought wicketkeepers were supposed to be more intelligent than the quicks, but then, thinking back over some of the stumpers I've met maybe I'm not so sure.

In a situation where the South African attack comprised three quicks and a left arm tweaker, with Kallis unable to bowl, you'd have expected Peterson to get plenty of overs, so it should have been a case of holding out the quicks at one end and milking the tweaker without forcing Smith to bring back a quickie at that end.

Do that and you're likely to be able to stick around and, quite possibly, get fairly close to that South African score of 225. Sensible batting should have got us to the tea break somewhere around the 170 mark, hopefully with wickets in hand.

Instead, we lose Wade and Johnston looking like they're trying to hit the spinner out of the attack, which doesn't seem like the optimum approach when you're apparently trying to do it by numbers through injudicious slogs. Then Hastings, for some reason, decides to take on the deep fielder on the straight hit.

Not very bright.

It was a case where it should have been head down and get as many as possible, and use up as much time as possible in the process. Get to tea with wickets in hand, and bat on until, quite possibly, you've passed the target.That would have been somewhere around the sixty over mark, with a good hour and a half before the new ball is due, so you'd reckon there'd be a fair bit more of Peterson unless Smith decided to bring pace on from both ends.

If he did, and it didn't pay off it would have to be back to Peterson or try one of the part timers to use up some overs while you wait for the new ball.

But that's not the way it worked out, and with six overs between the change of innings and the tea break you're supposed to be looking at two goes at the openers and a two hour session, then another crack when they have to start again in the morning.

So we go in to tea with them 0/24, which isn't too bad, but thirty-four overs in the last session yield 206 runs, and it's goodnight nurse.

Now, I know we're not that good, but at the same time I don't think we're that bad either. Certainly you'd expect a little more fight out of the dog, which is what makes me suspect something happened.

We'll never know, of course, and but if it did it can be identified and steps taken to ensure we don't get caught that way again.

On the other hand, the assault that came in that final session would have been enough to derail most bowling attacks. Amla came in in the sixth over and came off on 99 after thirty-eight. Admittedly there was an extra half hour tacked on, but it was an innings that was as remarkable, in its own way, as Dougie Walters' century in a session in 1974 or the assault Roy Fredericks launched on Australia's pace attack the following year.

Smith's 84 was a decent knock as well, but, seriously, we should have been able to limit them to somewhere between 80 and 150 for the extended session.

There was obviously a bit of regrouping overnight, though Matthew Wade's comments reported here could only be described as optimistic to the point of being delusional.

Had things gone the way they should, and quite possibly could, have done, we'd have been heading towards the end of day Three with the Proteas scratching their heads and wondering whether they were far enough ahead to declare, or should they bat on for another forty-five minutes today just to be sure.

Still, Day Three was a much better performance in the Sticking to the Guns department, and the fact that Johnston and Starc finished up with the ten between them could see both headed off to Bellerive to deal with Sri Lanka, though you'd fancy Siddle and Hilfenhaus will be back on Hilfie's home ground.

From here, of course, there's no way we're going to score the 592 runs needed to win, and with that South African attack facing what could be two days in the field there's a chance for everyone in the top order to get among the runs, possibly sending Punter off with a ton but, more importantly, sorting things out as far as the top three are concerned and ensuring that Khawaja, Ferguson, Hughes or Doolan (the most likely candidates, I can't see the selectors going for Cosgrove, Rogers has been tried before and Henriques may have to wait for Watto's next injury) slot into a top order that's got a bit of form behind it.

Perth 2012: Day One

Given the fact that I was away from a TV screen for most of the first two sessions, you might think I've got a bit of a nerve commenting on what went down on Day One in Perth, but there are a couple of points that have arisen over the past forty-eight hours that need to be commented on before things proceed too much further.

For a start there's the Ponting retirement, and one could spend a couple of hours poring over and reflecting on the various mushroom-like analyses of the man and his career that have sprung up over the past forty-eight hours.

Most of them, probably, had already been composed over the preceding twelve months and placed on hold until the appropriate time following the long-anticipated press conference. In any case I didn't spend much time on them, largely since the reason I was going to miss most of the first two sessions' TV coverage was our end of the month retired teachers' lunch.

Fine, you might think. Lunch, no problem there.

Ordinarily, yes. But this one was the end of the year special excursion to Montes on the Gloucester Passage, which tacked an hour and a bit onto the time allocated for a lengthy lunch to allow you to get there and a further hour and a bit to make the return journey.

So a two hour lunch, two and a half hours transit time and whatever time gets tacked on if the driver decides to divert to Cannonvale for retail therapy and a few more things that needed to be attended to before we left didn't leave much time for an extended perusal of the tributes.

I have my own axes to grind about Punter, largely involving his role in losing the Ashes twice and his exaggerated view of his own tactical nous, but he's definitely one of the best bats I've seen in the space of the last forty years.

I'm not into who was the best arguments, but he was definitely one of the greats in the modern era.
And I'm not interested in whatever speculation might be going around as to whether he fell, jumped or was pushed.

In the long run that issue doesn't matter.

From here on, questions about the longevity of whoever's sitting in the #4 batting slot will concern the incumbent's ability and current form rather than the appropriate time for the bloke to retire and the associated question of whether he's still got it.

The timing means we can look at things against Sri Lanka and hopefully have things reasonably sorted before the Ashes, so from here we'll be asking whether Khawaja, Forrest, Hughes or whoever has the goods rather than whether Ponting can still cut it at the top level.

The other matter that needs comment concerns the bowling, and the ups and downs associated with Australia's pace bowling stocks.

It wasn't that long ago we were looking at the injured list, wondering what happened to all the reserves and muttering things like I thought we were supposed to have a bit of depth in that department.

Now, until Lyon came on to bowl, we had four blokes (Starc, Hastings, Watson, Johnston) all having their first trundle for the series and reducing the #1 Test ranked nation to 6/75. Amla's run out helped, but by all accounts the three specialist quicks and Watson all bowled very well. That was the impression I got from the radio commentary once we were in the car for the return journey, anyway…

On yesterday's evidence, assuming they're still fit, any of the current trio could well be pushing Siddle and Hilfenhaus for a slot in Melbourne and beyond, with the likes of Bird, Butterworth, Feldman and Cutting all breathing down their necks.

One thing that comes through strongly here is the importance of Watson's role as an all-rounder, which is arguably what got Lyon into the eleven. I thought his 3/41 off 12 was a good performance by an offie in Perth on Day One. He's still very much a work in progress, but the key word here is progress, which is being made and is travelling in the right direction.

That, by the way, is something that didn't seem to happen with Hauritz and Krejza under the previous captain.

The important point here is that with Watson bowling a couple of sharpish three over spells he'll relieve some of the workload on the other quicks, provide an avenue to play a spinner and, hopefully, mean we're not likely to have anyone out of the pace battery getting through the workload that did for Siddle and Hilfenhaus on the way to Perth.

Give 'em all a run, shuffle and sample, mix and match and see where we are when it's time to select the side for the Ashes.

And that, of course, is the long term priority once this current game is done and dusted.