The Not Watching The Ashes Chronicles – Part 2
I think there is some sort of madness at play here. All last night there was the sort of fevered excitement that recalled my time as a child on Christmas Eve, except I was the grumpy parent who had to pay for all the effing presents this time. Outside looking in. People who had their TNT contracts in place, not really caring that the company has just lost its crown jewel and will probably go the way of test match batting, but moaning at the commentators, when Sky hasn’t shown an Ashes tour since KP was in the England team. Or if you hate him, Graham Swann. There’s a choice of two shrinking violets for you. I think cricket lends itself to professional broadcasters, not cricketers who can talk. There’s a huge difference. I have no idea how good the comms were, so I’ll leave it to anyone who cares.
So I first woke up at around 4am. I am a dodgy sleeper, as my wristband tells me most nights, but I had gone a full 4 hours asleep so that is quite rare. I flick on the phone and I see England are 74 for 3. No idea if we won the toss – I don’t miss the stream of Tweets to tell me that from everyone and their mutt – but my first reaction was “not awful”. A quick bleary eyed look to see Crawley was out in the first over. Hey, the last time we won the Ashes overseas we lost a wicket in the first over, (let’s not mention the last time it happened though, Rory). Also noted that Pope had 36 not out and had held the top order together. Hmmm. And Hmmmmmmmmmmm. Joe Root got a duck. Even more hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.
So I tried to go back to sleep and then started wondering if I’d imagined anything, and the sleep was restless, but I had to get into a rhythm of not staying awake all night. My job is so much harder than the earlier days of the blogging (one of the deals I am working on at the moment made BBC News World page lead – a bit tense – this week) so I need the rest and had another call this morning. But in between dreams of buying bags of crisps at a mythical supermarket at the end of Grove Street, Deptford (analyse that!) where they were giving away free Honey Nut Cornflakes (who is the nut here) I give in and at 7 I pick up the phone.
England (32.5) 172
Australia (4.1) 0/1
WHAT!
172 in 32 overs. Is Smith batting three, Labuschagne opening, where’s Khawaja (answer appeared to be “on the toilet”) and why haven’t they got any runs? Who is Weatherald? How many did Pope get?
I have a call at 9 am, at home, the only thing vital today until my client loses his shit, so stay in bed as it is too cold to get up, and go back into another doze, where I find out that my desire for crisps and honey nut cornflakes meant I forgot the beer, and then wake up to see it is Aussie at 61/4. Hmmm. IS SMITH OUT?????
The live comms says the batsmen are Head and Green. Good. No Smith. Try to doze a bit more. Not getting anywhere, and they are in the 70s now. Doze again, alarm is at 8:30 – the joy of home working – but sleep is difficult. Wake up, and it is 100/6. Er. Game on. Then each time I look another wicket. “ALEXA, what’s the England cricket score. 117/7. It’s 8 by the time the coffee is made. 9 by the time I have finished the call, I switch on BBC Sounds for the last over at 10 to 10.
This made Day 1 at Lord’s 2005 look like the Vicarage Fete. But not by much. That day it was 282 for 17 wickets in 77.2 overs – today it is 295 runs for 19 wickets in 71.5 overs. “C’est l’Ashes, c’est la folie” as might have been said.
I am not going to analyse something I haven’t watched, but will try to catch BBC IPlayer later. From the outside the twitterverse went loony at half-time, and punch drunk and staggering around at close. Probably like my mate who got this as his first day’s test cricket overseas. (Mine? 364 for 2, Nasser’s toss, the Aussie screaming “Wanker” at Matthew Hoggard all day, Simon Jones). If he’s not off his head by the end of the day, he’s not doing it properly.
The tale of the tape is that Mitchell Starc took 7 for 58. Always thought he was a really decent strike bowler, and that others got the plaudits, and he’s been around a while. This is his 101st test? 400+ wickets. Fair player in this era. England contributions was from “Daft As A Brush” Harry Brook with 52, Ollie “Bad Body Language” Pope with 46 and a bang crash 33 from Jamie Smith.
England got a wicket with the second ball of the innings, to dismiss debutant Weatherald, and Ben Stokes came on later on to brush up the middle and lower order, no doubt to be ribbed by Josh Tongue at the end of the day. Our FIVE seamers, almost heresy to the Twitterati, seemed to be the plan here. In the limited comms I heard, Tuffers was going on about how this was perfect for Stokes, a true piece of “after the fact” punditry that I had to admire the brazen cheek of. Next, I am going to tell you that it was a brilliant idea that with four rocket paced seamers, and Greenidge, Richards and Haynes in my line-up, I wouldn’t be preparing dust bowls in the Caribbean.
So basically, glass half empty, rather than my usual “what glass” attitude, the game is still very finely balanced. It is giving me flashbacks of another Ashes opener – Brisbane 1990. Not in pace. England were bowled out for 194 in a snail-paced 78 overs (imagine that!!!!) and England fought back to bowl the hosts out for 152 in a barely quicker – actually less RPO – 63 overs. Let’s not talk about the rest of it, or how Australia ended up winning by 10 wickets now.
So the day is over, and all that remains is to see how the Doorman is taking it. He’s had a pop at Stuart Broad for being his favourite word “sanctimonious”. I don’t think he knows what the word means, but he does love using it. He thinks Mitchell Starc will be filthy for having to bat 2 hours after he’d bowled England out, but I am sure he must have had a shower, or does Doorman know too much about their ablution habits (the Aussies think Poms avoid the soap dish, just ask them). He was a little cocky at the start of the subsidence
Nicely tagging in the ECB, who probably wonder who this frightful fellow is.
He retweeted this bloody con… you get lunch, see one ball, listen to a one eyed commentator who seems one of the few jobless at this point, and then you are turfed out.
I’ve not read this article yet…
I can’t wait.
Post-play….. It’s all gone a bit quiet.
See you tomorrow.
UPDATE…. WE HAVE A DOORMAN SIGHTING! It is as insightful as it is churlish. Did England bowl well, Malcolm. Come on now, you can say it, it won’t hurt. I promise…
Being Outside Cricket 
An entertaining but bizzare day. Englands bowling was great and you can see why they were so keen to get this group of 4 fast bowlers fit and firing for this series. But the batting was woeful especially given the absence of Cummins and Hazelwood. I think I am right in saying no side batting second has won a Test Match at Perth Stadium so all they had to do was dial back a bit on the aggressive batting, get a decent score and they had a huge chance to go 1 nil up. They can still win from here but they love making things hard for themselves. (My biggest gripe for the day was Smith, who was picked over Foakes because he get runs with the tail, gets caught in the deep hooking and they lose their last 5 wicket for 12 runs.)
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Typical Australians, they build a brand new stadium, and forget to put a decent pitch in it. And talking of Australians who forget things why does Malcolm Conn still use a photo that looks like it was taken in the 1930s?
It’s difficult to make any serious judgements after today as the pitch was the winner. Which predictably leads to bizarre punditry. On the BBC web site Michael Vaughn Is quoted after Englands innings as saying that England “brought Bazball, but left their brains behind.“ However, by the end of play he claimed that Englands bowling was the “best he has seen.” Really? Still it allows him to play the modern pundits favourite………..”it’s the greatest evvvvvvveerrrrr!!.”
I think people are going a little overboard on England’s much vaunted express pace attack. After all, Archer/Wood and Atkinson took just 2 wickets between them. It was the medium/fast Stokes (not quite a medium trundler ) who picked up 5 of the wickets. I think it’s likely Starc will repeat a similar feat in the second innings, so who will get the second innings runs for England? And how many do they need? 200? Could they defend 150?
Barring weather, only two results now seem possible. 19 wickets in a day. Allowing 4 minutes for each batsman change that is a loss of some 76 minutes, so can’t really complain at how few overs were bowled. They don’t need many overs these days. Bad luck if you have a ticket for day 4. You might not see much on day 3 either.
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I only saw the highlights but it didn’t seem that the pitch was acting up. It looked pretty decent with a little lateral movement on offer – much like you would expect from a pitch in the UK. The raw pace of Archer and Wood seemed to unnerve some of the Aussies – Smith got clattered a lot. Stokes was like late-period Botham, picking up wickets by bowling filth. His aura got the wickets. A lot of the batters got themselves out – the 3 Brits mindlessly trying for 6s and holing out on the boundary, Head popping a catch to midwicket, the opener who tripped over to a delivery on his toes etc. And what the Hell was Khawaja up to – forcing Labuschagne to open and forcing Smith to bat 3, thus opening the gate for the English quicks?
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Apologies. I haven’t read a word. But I was keen to see if the community still alive ! Beautiful
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