Test 4, Boxing Doze

Went for a nap in the second session today and had to talk myself out of going back for seconds in the third one. The 'G, the scale, the crowds, the occasion, the zzzzzzzzzzz. According to Jim Maxwell, Clarke had even taken to "vigorously rubbing the ball on his trousers, trying to find some excitement there", that's how bad it got. Boom tish! Thank you very much.

Jean-Paul Boycott continued with the nihilism, declaring that Cook had got out with a "nothingness" shot and generally talking a mean streak. David Warner "would get his comeuppance" and the sport of golf in general was a con. And yet, you "need positivity in everything". I can usually enjoy Geoffrey, but he was a real horrible Christmas uncle today. In the context of recent chatter, it gives me some satisfaction that Kevin Pietersen has passed him on the list of all-time run scorers for England, with roughly the same average.

People booed Kevin Pietersen when he stopped and called for a physio in the middle of an over, but what they didn't realise was that only the physio had the spider to send after the fly he'd swallowed. Boom boom. Merrrry Christmas!

Waterloo sunset

I feel like the icon of the Australian victory this summer will be a great hovering Cheshire-like moustache. It's Johnson's of course (whose Cheshire smile is already pretty impressive), but it will have a life of its own as the prickly symbol of all the biff and Boof and snarly hairy manliness. And in the other corner will, alas, be a plate of crumbed tofu, symbol of the "1 percenters", as Kerry has started to call them, the namby-pamby book-learned carrot-munching sports scientists who clearly made off with the balls of the English team. It's a bit silly and a bit offensive in that rah-rah let-men-be-men way, but every series must have its mythology. It's been a remarkably consistent one. I can't remember a series where there have been so many similarities between the course and flow of each game, the same story told over and again, and not a story with any great twists. It feels a bit like a dream. I'm sure it doesn't feel that way to people who have had to work their guts out in the middle of the WACA in a heat wave. Plenty of beautiful cricket love out there at the end of the game today, lots of "hugshakes" to use Quentin Hull's slip of the tongue. Siddle and Haddin were a highlight.

For me the wait to get the Ashes back has really been since 2005 rather than 2009. In my mind the 2006-2007 clean sweep was a blip, a parting gift from the outgoing greats that couldn't be built on because of that. So this is sweet but it also means I'm hungry (already! the ingratitude!) to see us do it again in England. I have strangely no memory of the 2001 Ashes. I have no idea what I was doing, obviously not paying attention, but I feel like I've never seen us win in England.

I've mentioned my love of a wilty English cricketer previously and I do also love the wilty English cricket commentator. Someone like Jim Maxwell keeps to a firm school-principal tone whether times are up or down, but people like Jonathan Agnew get this wonderful sigh in their voice when they're losing, a sort of resigned wistfulness that reached its apogee when Aggers suggested to some downhearted English spectators that they contemplate the beautiful WA sunset. Geoffrey Boycott is philosophical in another way. On Sunday he described the ball of Siddle's that removed Prior not as a "nothing" ball, but as a "nothingness" ball. I think that would actually be quite hard to play.

Test 3 Day 1

Alastair Cook was presented with a silver cap for his 100th test, totally impractical for wearing under the Western Australian sun, and Michael Clarke got a cloth one with stitching on the sides saying "I played 100 Tests for Australia and all I got was this lousy cap".

Business as usual for a day 1 of this series: win the toss, bat, don't put in an especially convincing performance with the bat. Better than Day 1 Brisbane, bit worse than Day 1 Adelaide, but it hasn't been the days 1 that have decided anything this series or even revealed very much. Today's the day. It occurred to me in bed this morning in any case that a strong tail with puny forearms is a rather kangaroo-like arrangement, almost patriotic.

It also occurred to me that the English have only bowled out the Australian team once this whole series. They got us all out in the first innings of the first test and then not since. That must be immensely frustrating. I know commentators have said how downcast the body language of the English is on the field, and Alastair Cook is starting to show the customary dolefulness of the Losing English Captain a Long Way from Home with a Long Way to Go (LEC-LWH-LWG), but I think their problem is more rage, on the batting side at least. It's like the Australians are Darth Vader to the English's Luke Skywalker, breathing down their neck, whispering provocations and luring them into the red mist.

There was a beautiful bit of symmetry to the Johnson/Broad moment of last test when Broad spent an eternity between balls fixing a spike and generally stuffing around, only for Johnson to hit him for 4 - twice.

I was going to make ECB Protein Chocolate Brownies for this match but - surprise! - one of the ingredients (date syrup) is proving elusive and another (Magimix Musclemass whey protein*) only seems to be sold by the kilo at around $60 a pop and I only need 100 g. I guess the pros don't do things by tenths. I sincerely hope that sports ground caterers are like the tuck shop ladies in Jamie's School Dinners. The muttering! The arm-folding! The eye rolling! If I end up 'moving forward' with the ECB brownies, I will be using skim milk powder.

*The brand name of the whey powder is actually Maximuscle Promax, but Magimix Musclemass is how I remembered it when I was talking with the lady in the chemist and that is how it lives on in my heart.

Flat -> bumpy

More spice! That's more like it. Or more unlike it, because it hasn't been very like the Australian team to really spank opposing teams in recent times. It's a strange feeling. It's (a) a good feeling, lots of fun, whoops of joy; (b) a familiar feeling, because it used to be like this most of the time; (c) an unfamiliar feeling, because it's been a long time between spankings, and it was certainly before my time that we last spanked with such pace. It's sweet, but it almost seems too easy. What happened?

Favourite things

Favourite moment number one today was when Stuart Broad came to the crease to face Mitchell Johnson and instigated a long princess-and-the-pea hunt for an offending glint of light off a bolt on the side of the sight board. Then was bowled. Great set up, great punch line. I like Stuart Broad, he's a bare-faced, poker-faced gamesman and I take my hat off to him. Along with maybe Carberry, he's the only remotely likeable member of the English team as far as I'm concerned. Pretty much everyone else enrages me.

Favourite moment number two was Mitchell Johnson's "serious" face send off to James Anderson. The opposite of a come hither but seductive nevertheless. Mean girls! Channel 9 was also mean by playing The Big Pink's Dominoes in the break between innings (main line: "These girls fall like dominoes" Girls!).

Speaking of meanness, it always surprises me how commentators who harrumph about T20 and boorishness and generally espouse a mild-mannered ideal of the sport openly drool down the microphone at a vicious bouncer. Sort of like it's okay to try to break someone's arm but not okay to tell them you will. Okay.

Girls on fire

With the flambé intros, the rule seems to be that fast bowlers get a close up that makes them look like serial killers and spinners get a head and shoulders, except that Panesar got the serial killer treatment so I don't know anymore.

Lookalike corner

I once claimed Broad was a lost Hanson. Here's an attempt to sell Joe Root as a lost Windsor (with a soupçon of Diana Spencer?).

But this is the real one. I've heard Michael Carberry does a fine impression of Viv Richards, but I think he could turn his talents in another direction.

The big question is: 

What to cook for the next game?

Test 2, Day 1 - Adelaide

I found it hard to get excited about today. Before play, yes, and while Warner was still batting, yes, but once he got out it felt like the potential show was over and nothing really great or really terrible happened after that. The clatter before tea roused one eye open, and I loved Jimmy Anderson's smile at Watto when he caught him, but there wasn't anything really to disturb an afternoon nap. Flat, flat, flat. A drop in pitch, indeed.

So far we are fulfilling the neither-good-nor-bad forecast of the ECB Butternut Squash and Falafel Coronation. More spice!