Leg Side Filth

Peter George had something of a tough day at the office yesterday.

Expectations were high for the young newcomer on his Test debut. His bowling for South Australia has been called “McGrath-like”, which is uncomfortably reminiscent of the fact Phil Hughes was compared to Bradman before Steve “straight to 2nd slip” Harmison rediscovered the killer inside himself and took Hughes apart with viciously directed straight lifters in last year’s tour match at New Road.

So the boy George would have been understandably nervy when thrown the ball for the first time during the evening session of Day 2. Faced with the task of bowling at India’s galacticos, his first over was all over the bloody place and Sehwag duly took a liking to him, pasting him for 2 successive boundaries.

George did manage the one maiden in that session, and as Sachin and India marched inexorably on the next day he seemed to settle down and find his line with more consistency. He also introduced us to the slo-mo bouncer, which we all had a good laugh at, but when we’d stopped pissing ourselves realised it proved quite effective in that when he bowled it no runs seemed to be forthcoming.

It did cross my mind during that nightmare first over that such is the irony, comedy, karma, providence of cricket, call it what you will – or maybe just the hand of a cricket god moved to mercy by a young man’s thankless exertions – that Tendulkar would probably be Peter George’s first Test wicket.

And so it proved to be. Whichever god it was who wrote the script did ensure that the maestro wracked up another couple of stratospheric achievements – 49th Test ton, another double hundred, and so it (and he) goes on – before a beautiful swinging delivery from the debutant found Sachin’s inside edge as he tried to cut and chopped the ball onto his stumps.

If there is anything guaranteed to give you a little confidence on your maiden appearance for your country, taking the wicket of the world’s greatest batsman must surely be it.

A couple of days ago this Test match was wandering along the flat road leading to the nowhere of a nailed-on draw. Tomorrow, Day 5 will dawn with the promise of a victory. For whom, it’s too tight to say. India hold a slight advantage but it all depends on whether they can take Australia’s 3 remaining wickets quickly. At the moment Australia’s lead is 185, and five of their 7 wickets have gone to the spinners. Can Hauritz replicate the success of Ojha and Harbhajan? Will Ricky Ponting trust him enough to let him try?

There will be heroics. There will be tension. Larynxes will be screamed raw as bowlers appeal for everything. Batsmen will go to the middle all guns blazing and get out playing stupid shots.

Or, the last three wickets of Australia’s innings will fall cheaply and India will do the cricketing equivalent of stealing confectionery from a small child in knocking off the runs required.

The not knowing is part of the excitement, and it is part of what makes matches like this great.

Welcome… to Test cricket.

Murali Vijay was only 5 years old when Sachin Tendulkar made his international debut in 1989.

Today he took his place at The Little Master’s side to help India to a total of 435-5 at stumps on Day 3 against Australia at Bangalore.

As usual, the focus of the large crowd’s attention was Tendulkar’s faultless batting – he scored his 49th Test hundred and finished the day not out on 191 – but his partnership with his young apprentice added 308 runs for the 3rd wicket, and has made it very unlikely that India will lose this match.

The only times I have seen Murali Vijay bat in Tests he has been filling in for someone else. His first Test appearance was in November 2008, when Gautam Gambhir was banned for elbowing Shane Watson during the previous Test at Delhi. The debutant acquitted himself respectably, scoring 33 and 41 and, probably more importantly, running out Matthew Hayden when the god-bothering flat track bully was on 16.

Since then he has been in and out of the Indian team, called up to the ICC World Twenty20 squad in April to replace Sehwag who was suffering from a back injury. He has played 8 Tests including this one, and, until today, his highest score had been 87. Today he went one better, and despite suffering a couple of nerve-wracking moments – a run-out chance early on when a Nathan Hauritz throw missed the stumps, and an lbw shout off the bowling of Ben Hilfenhaus – he brought up his hundred with a scampered run and a celebratory leap. It was an innings of composure, elegance, superb driving and invaluable in the support it lent to his more illustrious partner at the other end.

The problem with being a substitute is that you will invariably be outshone by the established superstars that surround you. Today Murali Vijay made some progress in emerging from their extremely long shadows.

As a footnote, I was amused and exasperated to learn that since scoring that magnificent 139 (his innings ended with a tired swipe at a wide delivery from Johnson), Vijay has received “an official reprimand for breaching the ICC Code of Conduct and regulations governing clothing and equipment”. He apparently was displaying too many logos on his pads.

The laughable bit about all this was that the forbidden logos received a good long camera close-up while they were being covered up with tape yesterday during a break in play.

Only in cricket…

“When Alexander saw the breadth of his domain, he wept, for there were no more worlds to conquer.”

Sachin Tendulkar does not have this problem, as he seems to break records and expand the limits of what is possible in our best loved game on a regular basis.

Today at Bangalore, on Day 2 of the 2nd Test against Australia, he punched Nathan Hauritz through the covers for 4 and became the first man in history to reach 14000 Test runs. In January this year he passed the 13000 mark. Altogether, his international runs exceed 30000.

Those are just crazy numbers. It’s like Monopoly money. Genius sets its own goals, redefines its own standards of greatness, dismantles them, and sets them again. It is genius that ordinary mortals can barely find words for beyond the same oft-used clichés, because Sachin is better at cricket than most of us will ever be at anything.

There is no flash or bluster about The Little Master. You wonder whether achievement piled upon achievement, records set from the day he took guard in international cricket as a 16-year-old, have jaded him. How much can one man possibly achieve before the extraordinary becomes commonplace? When fans in the crowd hold up placards saying “God is at the crease”, “Keep silent, Sachin is batting”, when the howl of a crowd thirty thousand strong reaches a roaring crescendo as the bowler starts his run and you wait for that delivery that could be right for dispatching to the boundary en route to another milestone… how long do you have to be the best at what you do before you ever get used to that?

He goes quietly about his business with the bat, letting the weight of runs and the beauty of his strokeplay speak for him. It is only afterwards, when questioned, that he tells you honestly and modestly exactly what each achievement means to him. “Last 20 years I have pushed myself really hard. Challenges are always going to be there for me. All I need to do is to focus as hard as possible, work on my fitness, lead a disciplined life and use my body cleverly. When I started playing, I didn’t think of all these things. God has been really kind. I’m enjoying every moment.”

He gives as one of the keys to his success the fact that he still enjoys the game, and that the ball still finds the middle of the bat. The ball finds the middle of his bat with such consistency because, after a difficult period accompanied by injury, India’s failure in the World Cup of 2007 and critics like Ian Chappell questioning his place in the team, he is arguably now in the best form of his life.

Sachin is 37 years old. In the words of Indiana Jones, “it’s not the age; it’s the mileage”.

There is a lot of mileage under Tendulkar’s belt, and one hell of a lot of runs.

And he isn’t finished yet. Because just when it seems there are no more worlds for Tendulkar to conquer, he goes and finds another one.

Realistically, this 2nd Test against India which started today at Bangalore is Marcus North’s last chance to secure himself a place in the Australian team for the Ashes.

His scores prior to today make for pretty gloomy reading, if you are a Marcus North fan. I wouldn’t say I’m president of the Marcus North fan club, or even secretary, or god help me club mascot  (even on the weekends, when there’s no one else to help out), but let’s just say I don’t have as big a downer on him as a lot of folk who think he’s not Test quality. He is stodgy as fuck to watch, and will make you cry with the sheer, mind-numbing tedium of his dour, earnest scoring, but 96 at Edgbaston last year as well as three hundreds in his first six Tests suggests he is of some use when he gets himself set.

Of course, this won’t be the first time he has left it to the last minute to pull his arse from out of the fire of imminent selectorial rejection. He saved his career in the series in New Zealand earlier this year where he followed up 112* in Wellington with 90 in Hamilton, only to have the pressure pile back onto his shoulders by not exceeding 20 and only reaching double figures a total of three times in the three Tests prior to this one. By any measure, his form coming into this Test was bloody diabolical.

The Australian selectors will want him to make a big score at Bangalore, not least because his success here will save them an almighty Ashes headache. More at home on flat decks than turning ones, he made the most of a drying wicket that had early on aided the spinners to finish on 43 not out at stumps, with his country on 285-5.

There were other performances that would have been similarly encouraging for Australia: Shane Watson continues to confound us all by posting consistently big scores while miraculously remaining entirely uninjured, and Ricky Ponting managed to steady the ship with Mike Hussey after a brief flurry of wickets fell after lunch.

But all eyes will be on Marcus North when he re-takes his guard tomorrow. He will be looking to kick on towards a big score*, and Australia will be eyeing at least 400.

*note that having written this, I have likely ensured he will be out first ball. Despite the best laid plans of mice, men and Australian batsmen, shit does happen.

Mohali, India v Australia. Day 5, India on 122-7 and needing 94 runs to win.

Harbhajan Singh comes to the crease on a king pair.

2 balls later, having managed to get off the mark, he fends a short ball from Doug Bollinger off his glove through to Ricky Ponting at slip.

At 124 for 8 and still needing 92 to win, that looked like it was pretty much curtains for India.

In the book Pundits From Pakistan, Rahul Bhattacharya writes that when VVS Laxman is batting, the window of the comm box turns “a delicate shade of rose”. Today he was less the rose and more the thorn, rigid with back pain and grim determination and spiky of temper, screaming with fury at Pragyan Ojha for not taking a single during their last wicket partnership. India were 76-5 when he came out to bat with Suresh Raina as his runner and he proceeded to work his way deep into Australia’s twitching hide.

Wincing with pain after twisting to put away a Mitchell Johnson delivery during his 81-run partnership with Ishant Sharma, he kept his head while at the other end his partners were losing theirs (Dhoni’s demise in particular being down to the almost inevitable confusion caused by the combination of a runner and a sense of desperation).

Sharma seems to have rediscovered the fact he can take wickets, and now he was showing he could wield a bat as well. India were 162-8 at lunch and needed 54 more runs to win; Sharma was on 14, Laxman 2 away from his half century, though for him physiotherapy and painkillers would probably have taken precedence over food.

A gloriously swivel-wristed pull off Ben Hilfenhaus brought up Laxman’s 50, and by the time Sharma perished for 31 to an lbw shout that looked plumb in real time but on replay seemed to be going down leg (another argument for UDRS at all Test matches, surely), only 11 more were required.

11 runs, 1 wicket. A simple equation, a task still verging on the impossible. Laxman had understandably little confidence in Ojha’s ability with the bat and so singles were turned down, hurry-ups issued, obscenities yelled in shrieking desperation. Mid-pitch conferences were held after every ball and 3 sets of gloves punched.

The ending came amid frantic chaos as a result of 2 leg-byes with 3 results possible. Laxman, surely now running on adrenaline alone, ran cheering towards coach Gary Kirsten as the rest of the India team charged onto the field to congratulate and celebrate with their wounded, conquering hero.

Laxman has done this sort of thing before, carrying the burden of rescuing his team like a fire-fighter with a smoke victim over his shoulder fighting his way out of a burning building, but unlike Eden Gardens in 2001 the stadium at Mohali was almost empty. If ever an occasion demanded a raucous, gladiatorial crowd cheering their team on to victory it was surely this one.

Given such great drama, it is a shame that this is only a 2-match series and that the Border Gavaskar Trophy has already been decided. The two teams meet next at Bangalore two days hence.

So Tim Paine missed out narrowly on his maiden Test ton.

It doesn’t matter.

Australia’s young backup keeper, filling in since May while Brad Haddin is injured, not only did himself proud, he did it in a way that ensured his team are in a comfortable position at the end of Day 2 against India at Mohali.

Watchful when he needed to be, content to let centurion Shane Watson do the bulk of the scoring and then to let Mitchell Johnson display his usual brand of unfettered hitting, he anchored Australia’s innings and helped them to a total of 428 after they started the day on 224 for 5.

By the end of Day 1 he had scored a single run off 14 balls. He made the most of a couple of moments of luck – dropped by Dhoni on 0; a thick edge that went between keeper and slip when he was on 86 – but by the time he went for 92, edging Zaheer Khan to VVS Laxman at second slip, he looked a different batsman from the nervous young man who took guard at Lord’s against Pakistan back in July in his first Test appearance with his family watching, so over-awed by the occasion that he himself admitted, “I couldn’t feel my feet”. Fluent and assured, he took a particular liking to the left arm spin of Pragyan Ojha, stroking him for two successive boundaries.

Brad Haddin’s rehab continues and he is set to appear for the New South Wales Second XI this coming Monday, with a view to achieving full fitness in time for the first Ashes clash at Brisbane on November 25th. Already though, there are those talking of the feasibility of a woefully out of form Marcus North being dropped; whether Australia would ever decide to play an additional keeper as specialist batsman, who knows. I have been singing the praises of Tim Paine for a while now, as I believe he is Haddin’s natural successor, with bat and gloves.

After an initial period furiously debating each man’s respective value to the Australian team, it seems we all have a collective hard-on for Tim Paine now. And this pleases me.

Well, thank Christ that’s over. Watching England’s joyous, enthusiastic celebrations at the Rose Bowl at the end of the current ODI series against Pakistan last night felt like the breaking of a fever, or the lancing of a boil – the relief is bliss, but you would rather the disease didn’t come back any time soon.

Don’t get me wrong, the cricket itself was fascinating and the fact it went down to the last game made it more so, but much of the fascination was from a morbid, rubber-necking car-crash perspective, given the background of spot-fixing, scandal and Ijaz Butt. I’m not going to go into all that again because I am really just glad it is over, as I’m sure you all are, as I’m sure the England team is. The only thing left to say is that I would love to welcome back a Pakistan team, bursting as it is with talent, but not until all corruption has been cleansed from its ranks. Signs are this is not likely to happen soon, but we live in hope. I am not one of those who advocate the scorched-earth policy of banning Pakistan entirely from the world cricket arena, but something tells me this is the last England-Pakistan series we will have seen for a long time.

Anyway, enough of all that.

2:30 this afternoon at The Oval gave us the ridiculous scenario of Mike Atherton, standing in front of a big screen, ready to introduce a film clip naming this year’s England Ashes squad, a clip produced with all the slick bombast the ECB could muster and giving us a list already in the possession of news editors ready to click “update” on their websites on the stroke of 2:30 while the great ignorant unwashed were still digesting the news.

In brief: Chris Tremlett and Monty Panesar are in; no room for Adil Rashid or Ajmal Shahzad. Shahzad is in the Performance Squad; Rashid is not. Another notable absentee – from both squads – is Ravi Bopara, who will be playing first class cricket in South Africa. I am very pleased to see Tremlett given this opportunity, as I’ve been a fan of the guy since I saw him at Trent Bridge in 2007, where he took 3-12 in India’s second innings when they only needed 73 to win. He got a lot of applause from the fans in the stands that day, and seems a bowler reborn this year after moving to Surrey after criticism that he wasn’t aggressive enough: I’m hoping his prodigious height and ability to bang it in will pay dividends on the hard, bouncy Australian wickets.

Monty Panesar is also back, and will add backup to Graeme Swann should they require two spinners at Adelaide or Sydney. He acquitted himself well at the WACA in 2006, taking 5-92, in a series that turned into a relentless drubbing for England. Australia are not the team they were back then, but England will still need to pull out all the stops to beat them; this will be no cake walk.

In other good news, Leicestershire’s own wunderkind batsman, James Taylor, has been included in the Performance Squad. I would have liked to have seen Nathan Buck picked as well – perhaps it is still too early for him – but Taylor will be in Australia, during the Ashes, and well, given an injury or two, who knows?

The countdown to the Ashes starts now. Am I excited? Oh hells yes.

Chris Tremlett bowling at Trent Bridge, 2nd Test against India, 2007

The match that took place at the Oval, August 20th – 23rd, 2009, was the last time Andrew Flintoff played Test cricket.

He didn’t play at Headingley and England were screwed. Kevin Pietersen didn’t play either which meant England were doubly screwed. Fred returned at the Oval and though he only took one wicket, he pulled off one of the great moments of the summer in his run-out of Ricky Ponting as England proceeded to regain the Ashes.

But regardless of what happened in that last Test, I’d already had my moment of magic that summer.

I’m talking about Day 5 at Lord’s. Some days are so damn perfect you couldn’t script them any better if you sat down and tried, and Monday July 20th 2009 was one of these.

My day didn’t start all that well: train was late, phone call from work about some irrelevancy, 40 minutes to get from St Pancras to the ground in time for start of play, urgent need to piss before taking my seat in the Mound Stand (5 minute bell rang as I was in the toilets). But I think that must have been the cricket gods’ way of taking pity on me and getting all the extraneous bullshit out of the way “early doors”, as they say, because I was settled in my seat just as the umpires were coming out.

It’s ironic now, after the fact, that I’d entered the ballot for Saturday tickets and hadn’t been successful, and even when Day 5 tickets had gone on sale I’d laughed and bought one with no real expectation that the match would even last that long. As it stood, unbelievably, Australia were still dragging their innings along by bloodied broken fingernails, with Michael Clarke and Brad Haddin the last twitching neurons in a short-circuiting batting order. The sun was out, and the wicket was still a belter.

Clarke had impressed me. There’s something about him that annoys the hell out of me, with his numerically-illiterate tattoos and his to-the-manner-born expectation of captaincy once Ponting hangs up his bat – but he had played some lovely shots the day before and showed doughty determination while wickets had fallen around him. Only Brad Haddin – a batsman I found myself warming to, not least after his hopping terror that the ball stuck in his pad was still a live one – had stayed with him.

It was perfectly possible that these two could pull off the runs needed for an improbable victory. Improbable-but-possible is usually enough to give any side a sniff of victory against England. Mitchell Johnson and Nathan Hauritz were still to come, so it could have been a long day.

But magic happened; Flintoff happened, thundering down like the wrath of god on anything human standing between him and the stumps. He got Haddin with his 4th delivery for 80 with a ball that was only a few overs old and he sent it down consistently over 90 mph. Jesus christ it was beautiful. The noise was tremendous. We were all on our feet. The floor was sticky from 4 days’ worth of spilled beer and Pimms. I didn’t care. I didn’t care about anything but the fact I was here, and I was watching something that suddenly felt fraught with impending significance.

Clarke was tempted out of his crease by Swann with the 2nd ball of his over. Canny bit of bowling – Clarke walked down the wicket to the 1st ball of Swann’s over and I knew that’s how he would get out.

Mitchell Johnson was better with bat than with ball by an order of magnitude. His 50 came and went without me noticing until I looked up at the scoreboard and thought “shit”.

Fred again, got Hauritz, poor brave Hauritz with the dislocated finger, clean bowled him for 1. When he bowled Siddle he turned towards the Mound Stand and spread his arms and did that Colossus thing and we all went bonkers. Five wickets. Name on the board. Absolute magic. By this time I’d given up taking pictures because I just wanted to cheer and roar the lining of my lungs bloody along with everyone else.

Mitch’s resistance ended when Swanny got him for 63 and the reaction of the crowd was relief, disbelief, and crazy celebration. Fred was mobbed by the team and there was no way anyone in the crowd was sitting back down again.

It was all over by 12:40. England won, first time since 1934 against Australia at Lord’s.

The mood afterwards was one long cigarette after the orgasm of England’s victory. People were milling slowly about at the back of the Pavilion waiting for the Australian team; the museum was shut because there was a press conference going on inside; the amount of people just standing around was insane and no one seemed in any hurry to leave.

Fred’s career ended after England’s Ashes victory at the Oval and he went under the knife, yet again, for another procedure on his rickety knee. Increasingly, as time and rehab dragged on, his return to any sort of cricket became an ever-receding pipe dream, and while the announcement of his retirement from all forms of cricket on Thursday 16th September was criticized for its timing, coming as it did on the climactic day of 2010’s county championship race, it really came as no surprise to any of us.

Say what you like about Flintoff – the messianic wicket celebrations, the residency in Dubai, the polarizing dressing room presence – but he was a player who was, if not one of the all-time greats, a cricketer who gave England fans moments of genuine greatness, a man who gave his all every time he stepped onto the field.

No matter how many energy drinks he might pimp in the future, no matter how many witless reality TV shows he may appear on; none of this will ever make me forget his tremendous exploits as an England cricketer, and in particular that day at Lord’s when he ripped the heart out of the Australian team and gave England belief once again.

Farewell, Fred.

On this day, 18th March, 1877, Clem Hill, arguably Australia’s greatest left-handed batsman, was born.

He was pretty badass. A child prodigy, he scored 360 for Prince Alfred College at the age of 16, and in his career as Test cricketer set records that stood until Don Bradman and Jack Hobbs broke them. One of the “Big Six” in the 1912 dispute with the Australian Board of Control, he flattened a selector with a vicious right hook (he also bowled right-handed) and almost defenestrated him. There’s not many cricketers who’ve almost succeeded in throwing a selector out of a third storey window, but there have been doubtless many since who wished they could have followed his example.

One of his finest innings was scored in between bouts of throwing up on the Adelaide wicket in 1908 after he’d been in bed with gastric flu for three days and England were well on their way to victory. Afterwards dubbed “Clem ‘Ill” by the press, he batted for 5 hours 19 minutes for 160. He pulled Australia from the mire of 180 for 7 with a record eighth wicket partnership of 243 with Queensland’s Roger Hartigan, and England were beaten by 245 runs.

He was the original “nervous 90s” specialist, being out for 99, 98 and 97 in consecutive Test innings. He is also the only Australian batsman to be dismissed twice in Tests for the unlucky score of 87.

As a batsman, he was rated second only to the great Victor Trumper. He relished taking on the quicks, and great England fast bowler Tom Richardson once said to him: “You make me feel I took up fast bowling for your benefit.” His hook was a statement of powerful attack and no little courage in those days before helmets and grills. Always eager to get off the mark, he would often take a single or more off the first ball he received – the Golden Age’s equivalent of Kevin Pietersen’s “Red Bull run”. Known for testing the nerves of wicketkeepers, about a third of his strokes were made outside his crease, and his method of recovering his ground was to swing the bat right over his shoulder upon completion of his stroke and smack it down on the crease with an alacrity that, in pre- third umpire slow-mo replay days, would have the umpire puzzled as to whether the bat had come down before the bails had been taken off.

No slouch in the field, in 1902 he ran 25 yards to take a spectacular diving catch on the Old Trafford boundary in a Test Australia won by 3 runs.

When not being wound up by selectors, Hill was happy-go-lucky with a sunny, even temper. He was an extremely popular Australian captain, even when his side were losing.

Even away from cricket his life was eventful. In 1913 burglars broke into his house, removed his safe while he was asleep and blew it up in the garden. They stole £500 pounds worth of jewellery, but didn’t take any of the bats he had been presented with, so they couldn’t have been cricket fans. In 1909, during a car ride with a couple of South Australian team mates, his car overturned with their chauffeur pinned underneath it. Clem, with help from his team mates, lifted the car off him. Three years prior to this a wagon had driven into the back of his horse-drawn trap while out for a drive with the missus.

He died on September 5th 1945 after being thrown from a tram. He didn’t have much luck with wheeled vehicles.

He is one of my favourite batsmen of all time.

Happy birthday, Clem Hill.

Clem at the crease

England won the Ashes yesterday.

I can’t begin to describe how awesome, yet surreal, this is.

We were told before this series that Australia, without McGrath, Warne, Hayden, Langer and Gilchrist, were a weakened side. We were told England had a good chance of regaining the urn. But England lost in the West Indies, and Australia beat South Africa on their own turf and were the number 1 Test rated nation in the world.

What happened in this year’s Ashes series was so up and down and bizarre that the fact England won has still to sink in. In truth Australia are indeed a weakened side, and one going through transition trying to replace the greats who have departed (Hauritz for Warne) and nurturing young talent that is not yet firing consistently (Johnson, Hughes).

Collingwood and the amusingly stubborn partnership of Monty and Jimmy Anderson saved England’s bacon at Cardiff. Freddie bowled like a Viking god at Lord’s. Edgbaston was buggered into a bore-draw by both the rain and excitement-killing knocks by Pup Clarke and Marcus North (I had tickets for that day but poleaxed by swine flu I drifted in and out of consciousness on the couch all day and didn’t miss much). Headingley, oh Jesus, Headingley – the crowd chanting “We’re shit – and we’re 1 nil up” as the batting disintegrated summed up the utter direness of England’s performance. Good god, the batting was dire. Most Test teams have one god-awful collapse a year: England manage it once a series.

Australia’s collapse in their first innings sealed it for England – but even then, never say never: I’d not have bet against Australia chasing down a massive total because it wouldn’t have been the first time England bowlers have bottled it.

Ricky Ponting said during the presentation that looking back over the stats in this series (by which he means lack of hundreds by England batsmen as opposed to Australia’s and the fact the Aus bowlers have taken more wickets), he couldn’t figure out how England won. That was perhaps a tad ungracious, and got some boos from the crowd, but he has a point. If England had performed like this against the McGrath/Warne juggernaut of 2006/07, they’d have been shafted ten ways till Sunday – again.

As it was Hughes, the much vaunted wunderkind, failed to deal with the short ball and was promptly discarded, Nathan Hauritz bowled well at Cardiff but Australia still didn’t really give a fuck about him to the extent of leaving him out of the squad for the Oval, to their cost; Mitchell Johnson’s radar went AWOL and suggestions of “Midge! Phone your mum!” from the Edgbaston crowd may not have been entirely helpful; Bing didn’t play and Stuey Clarke was mystifyingly damned with faint praise by chief selector Andrew Hilditch after taking 3-18 at Headingley and really should have played in every Test.

Still, Shane Watson, called in to replace Hughes, more than coped at the top of the order. He scored three half centuries in five innings and more importantly managed to roll out of bed each morning without breaking something. Michael Clarke was Australia’s best batsman, and Marcus North put his hand up in with innings of dogged defiance at No 6 while chipping in with the ball. Midge got his mojo back and Hauritz’s performance at Cardiff made me think that Australia should shut the hell up about looking for a new Warne and look to go forward with this guy because he’s sure as shit better than Beau Casson. Hauritz must feel like the young second wife whose hubby can’t stop going on about his stunning first wife who was his one great love and who he still carries a torch for. It sucks and I felt sorry for the guy when I read he’d been avoiding reading the newspapers with their endless “is this the best Australia can find?” coverage.

England had their own travails to deal with. Fred’s knee packed up and KP’s achilles decided it had had enough. England were without both players at Headingley, and this was really one in the face for those who said England perform better without Flintoff, and that Pietersen should be dropped as punishment for giving his wicket away in the 90s, because without them England sucked. They were without Flintoff’s heart, and without the sheer bloody-minded determination Pietersen brings to the middle. I’m of the opinion Pietersen made a pretty good captain, and in time could have been a great one. Strauss decided to pursue a career in cricket rather than in the City, and somewhat appropriately, he captains like an accountant. Don’t expect any daring declarations from this guy. But his batting was solid, which was more than could be said for a few of them. Bell was infuriating – again, he didn’t step up when England needed him to, and the explosive potential of Ravi Bopara seen earlier in the year against the West Indies fizzled meekly into nothingness. Cook for some reason seems to have escaped scrutiny, despite posting one big score of 95 in this series and then nothing of note thereafter.

Bopara’s replacement, Jonathan Trott, was awesome. A century on debut in the deciding Test of an Ashes series takes some beating. He doesn’t have the insouciant brilliance of Pietersen or the outrageous, showboating talent, but boy he can bat. KP reckons he and Trott will get some flack from the South African crowds when they tour there this winter. The SA crowds can go fuck themselves. With KP’s strutting aggression and Trott’s steady robustness I can’t wait to see these two together out in the middle come December.

Of course, England will be without Fred. All the bowlers stepped up at various points, be it with ball or bat, but most of the attention was on Flintoff. I was at Lord’s on the day he won that Test for England and it was magical, amazing, something I’ll remember for the rest of my life. This wasn’t quite Flintoff’s Ashes, but the big man gave us all something to remember him by.

The highlights of Day 4 at the Oval are playing on the TV behind me as I’m writing this. Earlier this morning Flintoff held a press conference. He told how he had a quiet meal with wife Rachael last night and that the celebrations this time around were more poignant than the full-on alcoholic debauchery of 2005. He goes into surgery tomorrow morning to get his knee sorted and will be out for 9-12 months. Get well soon, Fred.

Andrew Strauss summed up the series best when he said during the presentation: “When we’re bad, we’re very bad; when we’re good, we’re good enough.”

Yep. “Good enough” may not be full-on awesome, but compared to the hiding England took in 06/07, it’ll do for me. It’ll do for me, and for every other England fan, for now. But if England want to keep hold of that urn come 2010, “good enough” won’t be enough when it comes time to jump on a plane Down Under and face a team who are at their most dangerous when they’re wounded.

Enjoy it, lads, because the hard work, that’s just beginning.