Test 3 Day 1 Mumble

I stayed up until 3.30 am watching the play after it finally started and then it seemed that they were doing well enough to manage on their own so I went to bed (plus it was THREE THIRTY). Kudos to the groundspeople, that outfield was whippet-like.

God is clearly trying to steer me back to a more charitable course when it comes to Shane Watson by making him an opener in this test. Because whatever I think in the abstract about the selection decision, and however Bizarro World Shane Watson and Simon Katich are as a couple, in the real world of sitting and watching him at the crease in this game, I can't want him to get out, I can't but want him to do well, I... I wish him well.

It was interesting viewing actually. Shane Watson looked like he was having the time of his life, and, well, if opening for Australia in an Ashes series in a must-win game isn't the "moment in time" he wanted I don't know what would be, so well should he wear a permanent grin.

And in the light of his public comments about Flintoff being his idol after 2005 I was intrigued to watch their... relationship? on the pitch. Basically it was Freddie on the one side looking florid and cranky and Shane on the other looking cheeky and troublesome - and being cheeky and troublesome I think, I caught the end of a replay where it looked like he had accidentally-on-purpose tripped Flintoff up a bit. A little bit Oedipal? I think it would be weird playing someone you've declared to be your idol, maybe even weirder to play someone who has declared you to be their idol, but then when I was growing up once you decided you liked someone that was the cue to avoid them at all costs and you would rather die than have them know so I might not be the best judge here.

I was going to take advantage of the rain to share a few of the wonders I found in my cricket Useful Box when searching for a picture of Freddie. I'll just leave it at the discovery of the first letter of Katich's 2005 dismissal "roar", which allows us to start a Sesame Street style word composition:

A Dish Served Reheated

We need to have a little talk about Freddie, and it should happen before more cricket happens because he is already turning into a bit of a moving target.

First Act: of praise

I have been mulling over Freddie since he announced his retirement, because he really was something in 2005:

In 2005 with him and Harmison and Hoggard it was like England, exasperated by endless criticism of the county system as an incubator of talent, simply decided to pull a bunch of thugs out of the pubs and off the streets (Hoggard out of a turnip patch) and unload them onto the pitch. They were such specimens of strength and health, but it was a Barbarian ideal rather than the usual Greco-Roman one. And then there was the beastie brain that eyed appreciatively the layer of fat that said they could not only survive the colder months but bring plenty of dead things back to the cave and elbow out the rest of the herd for more than their fair share.

Before I rummaged the above picture out of the Useful Box I searched on the net for Flintoff's spread-eagle stance as I remembered it and not finding anything to my satisfaction entered "blond viking" into Google Image instead and found this:

I liked the stance, but that really is more the Greco-Roman type and indeed I think we all know now how Shane Watson has been occupying himself while off with injuries (or how he gets them all?). What we learn from this however - Ponting take note - is that whoever faces off against a blond viking is inevitably a hideous orc.

But archetypal physiognomies aside, in 2005 it was also the special thrill of being caught up in a moment. The article that went with the picture of Freddie above is called: “Planets into alignment as Freddie stands tall with bat and ball”. It’s not that it was a fluke of circumstance but that whatever it was, was also the crowd and the time and the place and the season all coming together in that special sport way that turns a bunch of contingencies into something pre-ordained and makes you part of the action.*

* I keep thinking of Freddie as Milla Jojovich in the Fifth Element, and each of the elements of wind, earth, water and fire get activated and then there’s the big pash from the crowd/Bruce Willis and Freddie/Milla throws his head back and a huge beam of light pulses through him that pulverises the ‘Great Evil’ (Russell Crowe, even then?).


Second Act: but if this is a eulogy, doesn’t that means he’s dead?

So, I want to render unto Freddie what belongs to Freddie, but now we come to this now in 2009 and I’m pretty sure one of my French philosophers says that there’s something unholy about trying to repeat a passion.

After the last match one of my cricket friends was telling me about her turn-around on the Flintoff front (from Good Flintoff to Bad Flintoff) and I said yes, it all felt a bit reheated. And reheated is I think the word: a bit crusty round the edges and possibly only lukewarm in the middle. It’s obvious in one sense to say that it all seems a bit posey now, but I don’t mean his vogueing, more that it's like an amateur re-enactment, like he's playing himself, and it isn't completely convincing. I would not be surprised if he ripped off his own head in the dressing rooms to reveal Tony (or was it André?) Dimera underneath.

And he’s injured. Injured! Do you have any idea what that does to his Paleolithic stocks? Beastie brain has already curled up a lip and turned back to its cosmopolitan.

Of course in Edgbaston in 2005 and for some time after that we could enjoy Freddie because we didn’t know he and his mob would - could! - damn well win the whole thing. I’ll grant there’s a bit of “oh no!” going on here.

Nevertheless, please for your comparison:

2005 vs. 2009















I know my yoga teacher would say there’s a hell of a lot more heart chakra going on in exhibit A and I’d say she was right.

KP KO

I am very sorry to read that Kevin Pietersen is out of the series, because it has been a highlight of both games so far to see him make a dickhead of himself (following Nietszche's maxim to "become what you are").

Meh

I saw my doctor yesterday (coincidence, not to put my nose back into joint) and she'd been asking people what they did once they realised Australia were going to lose (by which she meant when they got to around 7-down, not several days ago), for example whether they'd turned off the telly and gone to bed at that point. Since in cricket years I am only 10-and-a-half years old, part of me is filled with round-eyed incomprehension at tales of such behaviour:

Ten-year-old: "Dad, why are those people walking away? The game's still going isn't it?"
Dad: "Judge them not harshly, my child [my Dad being… oooh, Gandalf?], it is simply that they have already seen too much, and are protecting what remains of their heathen eyeballs from the retina-searing glare of Mr Flintoff's holiness."

The doctor herself said that once she knew the cause was lost she started gunning for Freddy to get a 6-fer and "wished he was on our team", which were bold words because she knows me pretty well and I was within biting range.

Personally, I had someone bring me the cat to hold and proceeded to sledge Graeme Swann: "Oh my God you have such a BAD HAIRCUT! Not even the BALLS to be a proper MULLET!" I know, harsh.

It's been a really draining game. I'm a wreck. As Mums say, someone's a bit overtired from too many late nights and getting a bit overexcited (ewwww).

Things

Ceci n'est pas une réception

In a game of many catches that weren't, my favourite was Billy Doctrove's non-take of the new ball late on Day 4. Was the problem his use of upwardly cupped hands? Downwardly cupped hands? No: splayed arms as the ball lobbed into the middle of his chest and dropped to the ground. It was like kindy, or, to be honest, a bit like how I might try to catch a ball. And as the SBS Circus people (who have been very kind to me) said, continuing the kindy theme, when Anderson received the now-scuffed object, he looked like "a kid whose new toy is whacked with a mash hammer".

SBS Team Pt 2

When I was really only 10-and-a-half years old, my favourite book ever was The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster, with illustrations by Jules Feiffer. Which is probably why Greg Matthews' craggy raucousness these past couple of days has put me in mind of this:


The figure on the right is the Awful Dynne, and the boyish figure on the left is obviously Damien Martyn, though to be fair Damien has usually looked more entertained than this by goings-on. That he has managed to do so while barely moving his face has become a source of ongoing fascination for me. It's ridiculous to suggest he's been botoxed, but he does manage to channel all the expression in his face through just his eyes, the smallest of changes to his mouth shape and maybe the odd eyebrow lift, leaving vast expanses of facial acreage smooth and pretty and untouched. It's mesmerising.

This leaves Stuart MacGill, whose boxy weirdness, all angles, means he can only be the Dodecahedron (I think I even see some of his bowling action here):


PS.

I'm firmly of the opinion that an against-all-odds result like Cardiff is way more uplifting/downcasting than a straightforward win/loss like Lord's, and that the pressure will now be on England not to get prematurely dizzy and "finish the job", while Australia, and Mitchell Johnson in particular, can take some heart from a good go in the second innings, and let the pissed-offness focus their minds. That's my story anyway.

And is it my imagination, or are Ricky Pontings' fleshier parts (figuratively speaking) taking on a certain Steve Waugh gristle? That's a good thing. Well may everyone bang on about missing Warne and McGrath (and let's be clear, it's US who miss or don't miss Warne and McGrath, not the team, I don't think sportspeople have room for things like "missing"), but the people I wanted to see coming out of the sheds to stare down that second innings were Bevan and Waugh. Yes yes, wrong form of the game for Bevan, but still. Anyhoo, bring on Edgbaston, but not before I get some sleep.

The Go-To Girl

Because my technical insight into cricket is approximately nil, my appreciation of the game is rather like a pre-Modern worldview that relies on resemblances, resonances and random conjunctions to work out what’s going on. That’s my way of explaining my love of a lookalike.

So, I’ve worked out, probably long after everyone else, the exact element in Hauritz’s bowling action that gives the “girly” impression. It’s that flared left hand as he releases the ball:


It's the full-body equivalent of cocking a pinky finger when lifting a teacup to your mouth, and when it comes to flared hands, these people got there first:

But the Charleston connection was really worth pursuing. I mean, look at this:




Who'da thunk it? Ironically here it’s everything but the left hand that matches, but it made me realise that it’s also the pigeon toes and general Charlestonesque gawkiness that’s part of the overall effect of Hauritz's action. Mind you, a spinner's action is not always pretty: Stuart Magill used to look like a crow with a broken wing trying to take off.

I feel for Hauritz: it’s a game where physiognomy counts for a lot (how much does the squareness of Kumble’s jaw enter into perceptions of his honourable character? not to mention Flintoff, about whom more another time), and in an unusually hairy team he looks like he doesn’t shave yet, and amidst an unusually (for an Australian cricket team) good-looking lot, he’s rather plain—a man-child without being a boy-wonder.

But can he Charleston, or what?

Day 3 Cricket love

Briefly - Greg Matthews on public displays of affection in his time: "Marsh was too big to get your arms around and Greg Chappell wasn't worth the climb."

Test 2, Day 2: cosmic ruckus

Frankly, I'm a little concerned.

Because it would seem that Russell Crowe's ego, already thought to be planet-sized, in fact has the wildly bloated mass of an aging dwarf star whose imminent gravitational collapse threatens to engulf us all in a sucking black hole implosion.

This, however, would presumably resolve the game in a draw. I can see the scene in 100 years time when the Mo-cyborg is rolled out for his "stats" roll card on how the Aussies have always managed to avoid defeat at Lords: "Year X: saved by rain; year Y: saved by rain; year Z: saved by amazing rearguard batting by the bowlers, and then of course the 2009 Ashes when a seemingly inevitable loss was averted by the Russell Crowe Black Hole Catastrophe gobbling up the whole of Lords. There's meteorology and then there's METEOROLOGY, ya know? Terrible tragedy, but it saved the match and thank God Russ himself was also completely sucked up into his own dark, oh so dark Hole (har har)."

I called it a night just after they resumed following tea, when Katich and Hussey were ploddingly picking up the pieces of the first session. But I couldn't sleep and when I got up again and turned on the telly it was clear this was because my lizard brain couldn't find peace with all the cosmic ruckus created by collapsing Australian wickets. Six for 139! I took some pleasure in seeing Johnson bat, but even this was short-lived.

So Australia is on 7/150, it's total disarray, and in the middle of it all Nasser welcomes Russell to the commentary box with him and Warney. What would you do? What would anyone do? Russell Crowe would take the opportunity to launch into a musty and long-winded question about captaining strategy in the LAST GAME — cos Lord knows that's what's on everyone's minds at the moment — which he has clearly been carrying around in his figurative pocket all day like a crumpled acceptance speech and he may as well have decided at that moment to read one of his poems, because that's about how irrelevant and pontificating it was.

The question never got answered — possibly never got finished, it certainly seemed interminable — because then HADDIN fell, because ACTUALLY WE'RE IN THE MIDDLE OF A TUMULTUOUS COLLAPSE. GOD.

There was more. It was horrific. Maybe another time, I don't think I can go through it again right now. Even Warney seemed embarrassed, and Nasser was speechless, but then nothing Russ said was actually designed to draw any response, it was just thud, thud, thud, lob out my cricket kudos, whack down some names, ho ho ho, here I am, baby. In the end Nasser just said: "Well... thanks a lot." Go Russ, please go.

What else?

New Ways to get batsmen out Pt II

Peter Siddle has a real Fee Fi Fo Fum aura when he's up, but clearly the blood of an Englishman doesn't agree with him.

Batting bowlers I

I'm enjoying Jason Gillespie's new career as the Voice of the Batsman. In Monday's Sydney Morning Herald he weighed in on the question of Harmison's recall, speaking, of course, from the batsman's perspective:

"It's just that unnerving bounce. Even when he does pitch it up, as a batter you're not quite sure whether it's there to drive or press forward to because he's so tall and he gets that bounce." (my emphasis)

Then again during the rain delay yesterday he was chatting with the older folk in the BBC commentary box about Andrew Flintoff:

Dizzy: "You always felt you were in with a chance with Andrew Flintoff…"
Other commentators, checking they've got this right: "As… a batter?"
Dizzy (totally blithe): "As a batter, yeah…"

The fact he says "batter" rather than the more orthodox "batsman" makes it even better. He's great.

Batting bowlers II - Hauritz: Orphan Annie?

Hauritz's hapless face under his helmet at the end of the day put me in mind of something, someone, some cartooned someone, and I think this is it:


But more worried. Meanwhile, before I got up again and saw the horrorshow x 2, my only real thought about Day 2 was:

Graham Onions = Ben Hilfenhaus + Reg Mombassa

Test 2 Day 1 Mutter

I struggled to get into the game yesterday evening, what with the comparative excitement of Masterchef and some work distractions, but those aside, could we have lacked any more lustre in that opening session?

Even after we got a couple of wickets, by 1am I was just feeling a bit tired, cold, cranky and ready for bed, but then I came back from cleaning my teeth and found Pietersen walking and it perked me up considerably. Out came the extra cardie and hot cup of tea and I saw it through to stumps while tapping away at a less demanding job on the laptop.

Some things anyway...

New ways to get batsmen out

1. Nathan Hauritz
I could swear I heard Phil Tufnell on the radio say that rather than create drama à la Warne, Hauritz tries to "bore" the batsman out...

Jim Maxwell called Hauritz's bowling style "polite", which I think is probably his polite way of saying "like a big girl's blouse", but hey, Stuart Broad looks like a member of Hanson (ner), and if death by politeness works, it works:

Hauritz (in high voice): "Please sir, would you be so kind as to give me your wicket?"
English batsman (without thinking): "Why of course, little girl, here you... arrrgghh"

2. Mitchell Johnson
I think Warney was up to his old bamboozling of Englishmen when he tried to put the idea to his commentary box colleagues that Johnson's "spraying them all over the place" could be a cover for smuggling in a "jaffa" (or a "peach"), even asking Mike Atherton whether he had ever confronted such a "strategy" during his career, and how he "coped". Poor Johnson. It was so unexpected when he finally got a wicket that when I looked up from the computer at the noise and saw Johnson's jubilation I thought I was watching a montage of "Mitchell Johnson's past glories" rather than something happening live. Has he caught "star fast bowler" curse from Brett Lee?

Cricket Love

1. You could hear the hum of mutual affection between Henry Blofeld and Phil Tufnell on the radio together, their different styles of Englishness (posh/cockney) reverberating nicely. I could imagine the Disney animated feature with them silhouetted against the sunset, Bloers a preposterous cravat-wearing turkey and Tufnell a sly streetwise rat.

2. Warney really purred in the BBC commentary box when he was asked how he felt about Nasser Hussain, sitting next to him: "I love Nasser", he said, "I loved playing with Nasser."

I think Warney probably loves Nasser for much the same reason I love Nasser: because his manifest pain was SO MUCH FUN when he led England on a really wretched Australian tour. I saw them play a one-day game at the SCG where they made all of 112 in their innings, and then Gilchrist and Langer (or Martyn?) came out and smashed so many fours and sixes the crowd started to cheer when they didn't get a boundary.* And the scoreboard kept showing close-ups of Nasser's face as his eyes followed the high, long, trajectory of yet another ball going over the ropes. He did that English-cricket-captain combination of wincing agony and gloomed resignation very well. And literal resignation I think following that tour.

He's also in one of the only pictures in my "cricket love" collection that isn't of the Australian team:


This is Nasser and Andy Caddick, and I should have made a note of exactly what the occasion was, but it was from the "wretched" tour (2001-2?) and may have been from the dead rubber Sydney match that England won.

It was a treat in any case having Warney commentating, even though someone has left the liquid paper within his reach and he has gone and painted his teeth.


*[England's total actually 117, and it was Gilchrist and Hayden batting, but 76 runs of their winning total of 118 was made in boundaries, including 15 from Gilchrist]

Reverse sweep

So it’s going to be like that, is it? Go on then, have your excitement. Just don’t start making a habit of it.

Gawd, how the English love a gritty stand, they get all this race-memory flashback to the Blitz. I suppose you can’t expect them to be stirred to full-throated identification with, say, sulkiness, hopelessness or please-don’t-look-at-me-I’m-not-actually-here-ness. Because that's what it was all about on Day 4, traumatisation to the point of dissociative personality disorder, pain so deep they actually seemed to be floating outside of their own bodies and looking down on themselves. “What, this old thing?” “Oh, that Ashes!”

And every ad break there was Ricky Ponting: “Tired? Stressed?…”

Some highlights from the previous few days...

Cricket Love

Haddin & North were wonderfully cuddly, but the stand-out for me was Hussey stroking Johnson’s face when he got I think Flintoff out. Oh my. Whoever is doing the slo-mo visuals at SBS/BBC knows their stuff. Cannot of course find a photo or video of it, because by contrast cricket photographers and other highlights-package people have their priorities totally wrong.

Lengthening shadows

At about the exact same time a friend texted me with “Doesn’t anybody in the Aus team shave anymore?” I was admiring Katich’s 5+ o’clock shadow as he came on to bowl. “Bristling” is just the vibe you want in a cricketer.

Geoffrey Boycott

I have a cricket book called The Strangers’ Gallery: Some foreign views of English Cricket (London: Lemon Tree Press, 1974), and in a piece called “Star Gazing”, purple-hued and comma-loving US convert Marvin Cohen says of Geoffrey Boycott:

You’re in the classical tradition, our nation’s true stylist. I see the classical age of the thirties, in the golden wonder of your form. Peerless! Today is not decadent. In you, old stability fortifies us. You’re an anachronism. Clean up the rot, of our tawdry age. Purge us. Restore our noble heritage. Boycott the present. Live, our only lineage.

Don’t you worry Martin, Geoffrey’s on it. The problem with the English cricket team? Too many support staff—would you believe there are people who carry the players’ luggage—and too many drinks breaks. Also: jewellery, natty socks—serious question marks.

And if you want a vivid definition of “old-fashioned test cricket”, here’s GB’s thoughts around the the time Australia were picking off the middle order on Day 5 in a very satisfying manner:

It’s just old-fashioned test cricket: one team getting on top of another team and… (a pause as the “producer” part of Boycott’s brain starts signalling frantically, but fruitlessly) … grinding them down.

To taste the sweet I face the pain

SBS has been doing little vox pops with the Australian cricket team between sessions, including one where they were asked about what motivational music they listened to. Amidst a lot of AC/DC, Mötley Crüe and “Eye of the Tiger”, was Shane Watson saying that “despite what you might think” his tastes would be, he was fond of a Whitney Houston song, “One Moment in Time”. No really, he said, you have to listen to the lyrics. No really YOU Shane Watson: Whitney Houston is exactly what I would have expected from you and those lyrics are really terrible.

Someone who I have now worked out is James Hopes declared cheerily that Celine Dion does it for him. He seemed so ugly and good-natured that I found this charming. Later when asked to name a food item like Shane Warne’s toasted cheese sandwiches that keeps him going during a Test match, he answered: “My X-box.”


The SBS team

Greg Matthews had me hooting on Day 2 when he started earnestly advising Monty Panesar through the television screen. It was sort of a reversal of when Miss Patricia on Romper Room would get out the magic mirror and say “… and I can see Timmy, and Catherine…” and she knew she couldn’t but the kids around the nation didn't. He finished his first point with a “my friend” that sounded just like Steve Vizard’s shonky Persian carpet seller on Full Frontal.

I actually kind of love GM's gaucheness and the way you feel he only has one “gear”. Like he’d be exactly the same and say exactly the same thing wherever he was, whoever he was talking to, no adjustments for audience knowledge, register, context, like a little toy figure you wind up and put down on different surfaces and it just keeps walking and making noises in its own way. He’s what the fug girls would call “secretly awesome”.

Damien Martyn: the word I think of is “fey”, in the sense (now I actually look at a dictionary) of “otherwordly” rather than “about to die”. In my head the word “fey” also had faint overtones of coyness/flirtatiousness, probably because I think the only time I have known someone to actually use the word is JFK to describe Jacqueline. It’s the eye thing and the soft-spokenness that’s almost like one of those devices to make people lean closer to hear you.

I’m already quite liking rather than just “not being bothered by” Stuart Magill.


Great words, bad, naughty reality

On Day 2 when Stuart Broad was not getting out Aggers said he had “all his father’s cussedness”. In the end cussedness was perhaps the word of the 1st test.

Philosophers sometimes have to think of a word to describe the way reality has a certain resistance to one’s expectations, desires, ideas, etc., indeed this is almost its defining quality. There are terms like “facticity”, “refractoriness”, Peirce’s “secondness”... Cussedness is all these things with the addition of “being determinedly and deliberately so” (like Keating’s “recalcitrance”) and “causing you to use bad language”. When the dictionary gives the second meaning of “cussed” as “cursed”, I understand it in the very worldly sense of “is sworn at”.

Test 1 Day 1 Twitter

First session

First word after first ball: "Tame". But I was ashamed of myself for saying it.

Superstition at the start: ale or lager more auspicious for Australian victory? I'm a lager girl, but it IS winter and the pale ale seems to speak to me when I look in the fridge. After first taking the lager I actually run back to the fridge to swap it for the ale before the first ball. TV or radio commentary? Choice inhibited because the cat desperately anchors me to the spot as soon as I sit down, but I move to the other TV after a bit so I can work at the kitchen table while watching and the radio pairings are a treat: Blofeld & Chapell! Aggers and Boycott! Gillespie at lunch! Delightful.

Hilfenhaus looked more dangerous from the start, though both he and Johnson improved after the first few overs. And I had heard Johnson needs time to warm up.

Did you see the Hilfenhaus's Warney-like Come on! when he got the breakthrough?

Did you see the smile on Johnson's face when he got his first wicket? I've decided Mitchell Johnson looks a little bit like Jamie-Lee Curtis.

Poor Bopara, almost wished him luck compared to the odious Pietersen. I like an Anglo-Indian. Remember that Mark Butcher innings? But now I can't find any evidence that Mark Butcher is Anglo-Indian and it seems rude to press the point. And am I suggesting he is any less English? Erk, digging holes here.

Second session

I do love the way Bloers talks about a bowler, he used to wax very fully over Brett Lee and for that I am sorry Lee is not in. But he's doing a good number on Hilfenhaus. They always come across like El Caballo Blanco show ponies.

Damien Martyn has an extraordinary wide/wild-eyed look in the SBS commentary studio, a bit psychedelic, reminds me of a ventriloquist's dummy. So is Stuart or Greg the ventriloquist? I'll be watching to see if one of them ostentatiously takes a drink of water. The small screen demeanours of people you normally watch making big movements on a big stage are so fascinating—Stuart Clark for example has some kind of eye squint/tic you cant stop watching once you notice it. Makes him even more endearing. Greg Matthews, here and now, looks rough as guts. He's so uncool I put him beyond good or bad a long time ago. Stuart Magill isn't bothering me, I'll probably really like him by the end of the series.

Third session

Ricky Ponting says: "Every day I need to become healthier and more energetic." Isn't there an upper limit to that trend? Surely.

Dammit, again NOT PIETERSEN.

Finally Pietersen, and so to bed.

Here we go.

As I said to someone on Facebook this morning, I'm as jumpy as a cat on a hot tin roof, and have been all week. I'm nervous. More nervous (as I also said) about the old boys than the new boys because Ricky's just been so good temper-wise this year but I'm worried he'll throw it all out the window and regress at the first well-placed sledge...

Wrong player, but that kind of thing. I also felt uneasy when I heard that Ricky had been getting people to speak to the team about what the Ashes meant to them: this sounded very Steve Waugh to me (and I'm not sure how hearing Simon Katich say how the Ashes almost ruined his life twice is especially uplifting...) I do very much want Mr Katich ("Mr February") to do well. Maybe he & Ricky could shift some of their crankiness to Michael Clarke (I know Katich tried) to shake up his head prefect act—how did he become so insufferable?*

And Hussey: want him to do well too, worry he won't.

So those are the old boys, right? By contrast, I am all calm excitement at the prospect of seeing Mitchell Johnson, Stuart Clark (not *so* young, but I haven't seen him for a while), Siddle, Hilfenhaus and those nice new young batsmen.

In a bit of hopeful overinterpretation, I decided the decision to leave out Harmison was a sign the Poms were worried and superstitious about too much attention being given to his first ball. I.e. their confidence is so fragile that they're worried they'll fall apart if he sends down a blooper. I like that kind of worry in a Pom. I'll be willing it into existence.

*Speaking of crawlers, Shane Watson deserves never to play in an Ashes test again after publically declaring Flintoff to be his idol and role model after the 2005 Ashes. Flintoff was everyone's idol and role model after the 2005 Ashes, but that doesn't mean you SAY IT OUT LOUD.