Test 4 second verse: same as the first

Well I take everything back about self-administered haircuts, because Mitchell Johnson's once-over with the clippers on the No. 2 setting seems to have worked a treat (a reverse Samsonism that indeed was always a favoured explanation of Warney's success with the ball once he lost the mullet).

And I very much enjoyed the starlet-on-the-red-carpet-back-over-the-shoulder-look he threw Collingwood after he bounced him: très femme fatale. A varation actually on the steaminess he created with Stuart Broad on Day 4 at Edgbaston.

Not that I saw this live. Another of my favourite books when I was little was Marion Holland's A Big Ball of String. A boy collects pieces of string into a Big Ball and then, when he is confined to bed with a cold, sets himself up so he can basically run the world from his bed by pulling on bits of string:
It probably says a lot about me that as an idea of a Good Time—or Dream Lifestyle—this still strikes me as just about unbeatable.

Anyway, I mention it because as the English prepared for their 2nd innings I hauled the smaller TV into the bedroom and set myself up in bed with extra pillows, laptop, weekend newspaper, pen and notebook and… fell asleep almost immediately. Lizard brain prodded me awake to see Mitchell Johnson being an aeroplane and England on 5/78. Well, now you're just spoiling me.

I greet the haunted look of the crumbly English cricketer like an old friend of course. As mentioned in relation to Captain Nasser, there's something about loss—especially of the gasp-makingly embarassing sort—that suits the English like a comfy pair of corduroy slippers and a smelly old dressing-gown they really ought to chuck into the fireplace but can't quite let go of.

Personally, I feel "Burn the smelly dressing gown" represents an improvement on the desperately vague homilies the English were getting from other sources:

Bowling coach Ottis Gibson: "Stand up as Men."
Everyone's coach Greg Matthews:
1. "Stand up."
2. "Have a look at the badge on your shirts."
3. "Get into it."

(I do love it though when Greg puts on his glasses, a thought Stuart MacGill echoed last night: he is transformed in the most unlikely fashion from haggard old ocker into the local pastor or headmaster.)