In case you were wondering how I felt

Parallel story: when I am dodging work to watch the cricket I try to kill more than one bird, in this case making an apple pie during the first session.

There's been a lot of "5-nil" talk in the lead up to this series. To which I say: no amount of crowing “5-nil” will convince me that anything but an away series win will properly avenge the Ashes of 2005. And it will especially not avenge the tragesty* that was the 2011-12 home series loss, which no one seems to talk about. I tell you, the vision of Graeme Swann doing the “sprinkler” in front of the Barmy Army at the SCG is not easily forgotten, let alone forgiven.

The 2006-2007 series, the original “5-nil”, only represented “job done” for one person, Shane Warne, which we know because he called it a day. The pleasure of the 2006-2007 whitewash was the Shane Warne narrative that ran through it and ran through him. Not the wins per se, but the sheer force of will that won the Adelaide Test and the showmanship that produced the 700th wicket. It perfectly encapsulated the command of the elements and the story that characterised his whole career. 

It represented an appropriate counterpoint to 2005 because the great spectacle of that series, more than the losses per se, was the Agony of Warne trying to win the Ashes all by himself when all was collapsing around him. For sheer defiance in the face of the odds, for the attempt to be not only every bowler but every batsman, it was probably an even greater demonstration of will than 2006-2007, and all the greater for being unsuccessful.

Now, however, Test cricket seems to have settled into a too-comfortable pattern of we win here, you win there, I’m OK, you’re OK, trophies going back and forth like a game of pass-the-parcel where every child gets a prize. It’s not okay, I tell you. A while ago people said Australia crushing the English here at home was getting “boring” and I said never, never will I tire of the Melancholy of Nasser, but I think now that was because it came on top of beating them on their home territory - take that and that. Without that added edge, as part of a regular pattern… yes, it is potentially boring. And even if not, don’t pretend 5-nil is good enough.

*James Hooper came out with this portmanteau on an episode of the Back Page a while ago and it has stuck.

This

Yes. Combined age 451, combined chromosomal arms 56. A dick cannot of a Y chromosome an X chromosome make.

1. I’ll say firstly that we have to make allowances for Chappell and Lawry. Every cricketer who took the risk of helping Kerry Packer create the World Series was promised a job for life, so these two will not go anywhere until they die or damn well want to.

2. At the other end of the spectrum, I have never understood or accepted the presence of Mark Nicholas and you can see from the photo that he knows he does not belong there too. The anchor spot is the obvious entry point for a woman into this line up and should happen immediately.

3. Michael Clarke. Simultaneously bores and enrages me. I think this is the polarisation of the impression he used to make on me at press conferences: bland and irritating. He was so perfect at the media thing so this seems a logical continuation and yet not. So not. Apart from anything else we didn’t get a break from him. He went straight from captaining to the commentary box! We needed a rest. Everyone else leaves a decent gap. Don’t be so eager. Stop reminding us of how commercial a proposition you are. He won’t go, of course.

4. Warnie. Has the novelty worn off? His lack of self-censorship and strategic nous was refreshing at the start. Now he mostly appears as the har har larrikin** interspersed with pronouncements from on high about individual players that become media stories. There is no correlation between Warnie’s magnificence as a cricketer (see above) and his presence on the small screen. Warnie is big, but the pictures are small. He won’t go, of course.

5. Healy. Such a nice face. Can we keep him, Mum?

6. Michael Slater and Mark Taylor. Nothing personal, but it is hard to see their presence as necessary.

Funnily enough one of the aims of WSC was to attract more women and migrants to the game. Nine also recently televised parts the Women’s Ashes series, though unfortunately not the most telegenic moment of Elyse Perry’s 200. The tide in this area is turning very quickly. However stodgy the Nine commentary team is, I can’t see the line-up lasting too much longer. They might be hanging out for Elyse Perry to retire, but that might be a while.

** You know the irony about that whole “Gunna have a beer? Eh? Eh?” incident? Warnie is not really a beer drinker, as far as I can gather from the too-many biographies I have read. Too challenging for his palate, I guess. I would imagine he is a bourbon and coke man, maybe scotch and soda, the odd red wine. Not a big drinker in general I think. Most of the pictures of Warnie "drinking" alcohol show him pouring it over his head or attempting to fit his mouth around the whole rim of a glass, in the manner of, respectively, a toddler and a 12 year old. This didn’t stop the 99 Not Out beer designed for him by Moa from being a really excellent beer and by far the best value beer on the market when they started remaindering it.

In case you were wondering about the pie:

I think it speaks for itself.

Mo Jo

Mitch casts a spell.

Mitchell Johnson's retirement lets me pick up exactly where I left off last time, when I marvelled at his talents as a model. Now I'm being invited to step back and appraise his contribution as a whole, I'm just going to say the same thing writ large: I think I'll remember Mitchell Johnson as the only player to have brought genuine glamour to the team since Shane Warne. It's not the same thing as good looks, although I am partial to a dimple. It's being able to create a sort of haze that draws and holds the eyes, that casts a spell over the onlooker, the spectator, the batsman.

As with Warnie, the appreciation of the glamour is mixed with ambivalence. In Warnie's case it had to do with reservations about Warnie the person, or so I am told. In Johnson's case, it was the old "mercurial" flicker. It was one of the ways he made you watch him – you'd hold your breath during his run-up and scrutinise the release, the trajectory, trying to work out which Mitch had turned up that day. Warnie had the hide of a rhinoceros, whatever was happening on or off the field, he banished question marks from your mind as he did from his own. Mitchell was skittish like a racing horse and so visibly tormented when things weren't going well. I ranked him no.1 in the "inner turmoil" (and outer turmoil) stakes during a bad patch in 2011 . The fact that he seemed to be one of the nicest people on earth just made it more agonising, but when it all came together... ahhh. Pure joy, great theatre.

I liked watching him bat almost more than watching him bowl, and I liked watching him bat almost more than watching anyone else bat - relaxed, clean, handsome. I just liked watching him.

Johnson made his debut on the Test team the summer after Warnie left. Who will be the next homme fatal?

Dirk Nannes

... has dropped rather on my "likeability" meter. I didn't hear his comment that the Australian team not rushing after Taylor to congratulate him was "horrendous" behaviour, I only heard his follow-up when he said it was trivial "in itself" but significant against a background of Australian lack of sportsmanship. The problem with taking "backgrounds" into account is that's also how prejudice works, and bad relationships for that matter. You see someone's actions only through the lens of what you already think and expect of them, and so that's all you see. In any case, whether he is right or wrong, he is certainly not saying anything new, which is why I turned off the radio when they started reading out love letters from listeners saying how glad they were that "someone" had "finally" said what he said. "Everyone" has "always" said what he said.

Mixed messages

All the ads during the cricket are for hardware stores except for the ad for the Windies test series that says don't be the guy at the hardware store.

Batsy replies

Anonymous writes:

What do you make of the new Shane look, unkindly called ‘Scrawnie’ by the tabloids?

Anonymous, I’m glad you asked. Or I was. I wrote out a four-point response, assuming I knew what I was talking about, then actually Googled “scrawny warnie” and... yikes. I think I can still get some use out of my initial armchair serve, if we do a little reshuffling and allow for an element of digression.

1. There is almost always something a bit wrong with Shane’s look, and it’s almost always in the “trying too hard” direction. A bit too much hair product, a bit too much teeth whitener, a few diet shakes over the limit. Twas ever so. When I first came across Warney in 1998, he had a near-middle hair parting and a floppy fringe that made him look like the very worst kind of over-fed private-school frat-boy. And that’s the Mills & Boon heart of the Mystery of Shane: “He was everything I most despised... and yet... I found myself strangely drawn to him.”

2. I have seen this situation storyboarded as “unreconstructed Australian male turns uber-metrosexual, cherchez la femme!”, and that’s obviously nonsense. As Shane quickly and rightly pointed out, “I have always been High Julio, Julio among Julios, Laird of the Lairs. A vain man, with advanced hair.” I myself have always seen the pairing with Liz as in fact a four-way between the most lovingly tended eyebrows in the business. Situation normal all gussied up.

We need to look elsewhere for la femme here. Shane claims the diet-shake tip came from St Kilda player Steven Baker’s mother, which just shows how little really does change. Shane! Stay away from the mums with diet products!

3. This section was supposed to be about the actual weightloss, which I hadn’t actually looked into properly. To summarise: Reference to the great Shane Slimdown of the 2001 India Tour. Suggestion that he may be replacing one meal a day with a packet of cigarettes.

4. Cosmetic surgery? Not that you asked, but here’s what I think anyway: there’s so much you can do to yourself in the way of injections, fillers, and resurfacings these days that a great deal of plausible deniability is created around the question of cosmetic surgery. I also believe Shane to be a student of the “It’s not a lie if it’s none of your business” school of thinking.

After all that, is there an answer in there? I do prefer a higher-bodyfat Shane, but I’m sure that Shane will be back. Reversion to form is arguably another of his specialties.

As for your first question:

Is it true that Mise en Abyme once opened the batting for Pakistan in an ODI?

I’m pretty sure that’s one of the subplots of Shehan Karunatilaka’s Chinaman: The Legend of Pradeep Mathew, of which something next time.

Happy Birthday, Sister Sledge.

It’s Shane Warne’s birthday, which seems a good time to make a comeback and usher in the new cricket season. If you will look at “This Day in Shane Warne” below, you can see that Shane shares a birthday with Nana Mouskouri (1934), Jacqueline Bisset (1944) and the lead singer of Sister Sledge, Joni (1956). That’s not a bad haul. And I don’t know why I haven’t been calling Warnie “Sister Sledge” for the couple of years since I isolated that factoid.

This photo was taken on this day 6 years ago. It was a sort of office picnic at Sydney Uni. It’s a bit gloomy, and maybe that’s because we had just lost the 2005 Ashes. But we (my old flatmate and I, I am not being royal) tried to make up for it with baked goods, unwittingly setting a precedent for Ashes to come.

I don’t know if I should buckle and get cable or if that will be the end of me. I’ve been dipping into the internet and feeling a bit enthusiastic when we’ve doing well, but I couldn’t tell you much about what’s actually happened, I haven’t even caught the new spinner on Youtube. I’ve been putting in a last-ditch effort at hibernation these last couple of weeks, watching entire TV series on the laptop in bed. It gets very mise en abyme taking The Complete Works of Liz Lemon to the video store counter on a Saturday night, I can tell you, but no more looking into a glass darkly! Unless it’s the cricket. On with the show!

But no

I thought there was a glimmer of hope when Andrew Strauss decided to bowl. Wasn’t sending the other team in a famously series-turningly fatal move in Ashes lore? I was so mesmerised by this possibility that Anderson’s first couple of balls even looked... could they be a bit wide? But no.

Is “but no” the motto of the series?

I had thought for example that the Adelaide start was not just bad, but freakishly bad, "freakish" meaning "an aberration of nature", "statistically unlikely to happen again very soon". But no!

“You’d think they...” “What if...” “Surely...” But no. But... but... ? No!

I am grateful for Jonathan Agnew, who somehow manages to sound soothing even when he's saying "4 for 49".

Warnie

When Picasso first showed his portrait of Gertrude Stein and people said it didn’t look much like her, he replied: “It will.” Who would have thought the same principle would apply to the 2007-2008 VB Summer of Spin Shane Warne plastic figurine?

People have texted me to ask if I am driving the campaign to bring him back. My position is that I am all in favour of his return, on the condition that he arrive at the ground in a golden helicopter and is lowered to the pitch as fireworks are let off around the ground and “Thus Spake Zarathustra” blares from the speakers. I think that's about the level and flavour of the idea.

Test 1 Day 1

Good, right? I should say I thought that even before The Hat-Trick that Stopped a Nation, partly because I was so dreading total awfulness that the fact we looked at least competent at all times yesterday registered as a genuine win. That's a bit sad.

But also, isn't it Ben Hilfenhaus who won the day by playing up to the "1st ball" hoo-hah and getting a wicket at least thereabouts? It certainly made me let my breath out. That stuff is a bit superstitious, but I was at the Gabba on the 1st day 4 years ago and the English nerves and despair were certainly palpable, bedazzling and convincing.

I enjoyed Siddle as well of course. I've seen that particular "Come On!" before, specifically from Warnie taking out Herschelle Gibbs with a Gattingesque ball in the 1999 World Cup second semi-final against South Africa (this game is my only, my only source of traditional cricket insanely-detailed-historical-reference nerdiness, please let me keep it). It's the cry of the doubted bowler returning from injury, channelling the cry of the doubted team.

I was sure I'd made the Wild Thing comparison with Siddle before, that "I am a stomping roaring monster" thing, but I can't find it so at the risk of repeating myself:

Other notables: Greg Chappell spotted in the crowd wearing, I swear, pince-nez.

Speaking of shameless dandies, I also got around to watching the new Warnie show on the internet last night. Awkward. I sat through most of it, though I was forced to skip the "Bumble's Bits" (or whatever) segment, in which David Lloyd simulates being a painful old bugger cornering you in a pub, for fear of stabbing myself in the face with a fork.

Laird of the Lairs

I jumped up and down and clapped my hands and hooted when I saw Warnie leading the pack out onto the ground in the Australian Cricketers' Association XI v Australian XI T20 game last night. And hooted pretty much every time he was shown on screen—because of joy, of course, but also no small amount of hilarity.

Warnie, you are such a Lair. You are a Hilarious Lair. You are Laird of the Lairs. "Lair" is apparently an Australia-specific slang term, and I'm not surprised given people like Warnie wandering around.

Let me count the ways. I think he's been dyeing his eyelashes for a while, but is it possible a little eyebrow-waxing has entered the picture? On top of the blonde-tipping, yeah-yeahing, teeth-whitening, sun-bedding (would Warnie go the fake tan or the full carcinogen-rich approach? I suspect the latter—it could after all be a full-body nicotine stain…) and my flatmate read that striking shiny smoothness as assisted by the botulinum toxin: hardly unlikely.

I mock not, of course. I delight in.

Other things from the night:

Generation X Captain Warnie's recurring "Noice…" vs Generation Y Captain Clarke's recurring "Awesome…"

Healy on Lee Carseldine's tremendous 6 at the beginning of over 14: "Look at the contact, look at the carry, look at the camerawork…"

And who was that hollow-eyed young man from a Flannery O'Connor novel that bowled the last over? Nathan Rimmington, taking Movember's mission to raise awareness of male depression and wasting diseases to a whole new level.

Getty Images (c) 2009

Give us This Day in Shane Warne

I got so excited last week at the preview snippets of Simon Katich in the Masterchef kitchen that I almost crushed the cat (no pun… or rude new slang expression… intended). Great Squealing tomorrow night, no doubt.

And may I mention the shades of Warney in the delightfully zaftig George Calombaris? Last entry I referred to the “Balkan Haut” type allegedly embodied by Katich, and George has elements of a type I invented for Warney called “Buddha Warrior”.

It combines on the one hand a bodyfat-rich bonhomie that smiles and shines like the sun, the golden “virtue that bestows”, as Nietzsche’s Zarathustra describes it,* radiant and magnetic in its radiance. And on the other hand the fire in the belly: a boundless roaring competitive flame, the instinct to fight, win and kill, snakey patience and foxy wiliness... “Buddha Warrior” is where these attributes intersect and are the same thing.

George’s palate is no doubt broader than Warney’s. The palate of the average 6 year-old is broader than Warney’s. But within his category he has still come up with some Warney-like goods. Last week’s “Honestly, it looks like spew”, obviously. He has also confessed to a love of ham and pineapple, and in the original season when faced with steak tartare, he offered: “I have to say, raw meat FREAKS ME RIGHT OUT”.

And without wanting to get all Wagyu about it, that body fat – Warne’s, George's – really is marvellous. Nothing excessive about it. It’s seal-like: sleek, firm and functional. Strong, plump hands... Got it? Okay then.

It may have become apparent why I need something like “This Day in Shane Warne” to keep me in order. I don’t expect it is a thrilling read, but the process of putting it together is a pleasingly mundane devotional ritual. I can relive the innings that I didn’t see or don’t remember, or did see and do remember, and turn up the odd treasure, like the poignant “You dickhead, what are you doing? What have you done?”

When I lived in a Vietnamese neighbourhood in Melbourne, you’d see little Buddha shrines in the shops with tins of Pringles and cans of Coke for the Buddha’s enjoyment. Let’s just say This Day in Shane Warne is a bit like my tin of Pringles and can of Coke. Or can of spaghetti and packet of Benson and Hedges.

As 18^th century French novelist Claude Prosper Jolyot de Crébillon always says, “On s’ennuie quand on aime mediocrement.” Or: “Obsession: it’s just more fun!”

* “Tell me, pray: how came gold to the highest value? Because it is uncommon,
and unprofiting, and beaming, and soft in lustre; it always bestoweth itself […]
Insatiably striveth your soul for treasures and jewels, because your virtue is
insatiable in desiring to bestow. Ye constrain all things to flow towards you and
into you, so that they shall flow back again out of your fountain as the gifts of 
your love.” Honestly, I find Thus Spake Zarathustra pretty much unreadable, but
I have always liked the image of the “virtue that bestows.”

Test 5 Day 1 Expectoration

I have a miserable sneezy cold so I peered at the first day of this Test through a cloud of tissues and puffy eyes.

Drop dead diva

I have found in my heart a seam of viciousness wishing ill on Freddie's last test. I don't know, I'm just over it: it's not all about you, Mr F.

Having arranged myself on the sofa under a granny blanket with my eyes closed and the soothing voice of Phil Tufnell in the radio ear piece, I dozed through Matt Prior's entire innings, but rallied to see Flintoff speared by Johnson. It was spooky: I opened my eyes, turned my head to face the teev and Flintoff swished and was caught. Extremely satisfying for me, but he was absolutely, sputteringly livid – the rage (and the shot?) of a man who has fatally come to believe his own hype. It seems the problem may not be that he is a Flintoff impostor but that au contraire he believes rather too much that he is Andrew Flintoff.

Warney and me: hope after all?

My fantasies of conversing with Warney never quite surmount the hurdle of realism and so tend to be extremely awkward, but I do now detect some common ground in our love of a lookalike. I thought his get of Vince Vaughn for Jonathan Trott was good work, though his specification of Vince Vaughn "as Jeremy Grey in the film the Wedding Crashers" made me feel a bit sad for how much hotel cable television he has watched in his life.

Vince Vaughn is certainly a better get than my own hazy (sneezy) thoughts of Trott as a vague morph between Simon Taufel and Jacques Kallis. The latter was probably only because Trott was having a go at his fingernails the likes of which I haven't seen since high school and Jacques Kallis is practically interchangeable in my mind with Jaws from Moonraker.

Watson: why?

My only really topical mutter over the past 10 days has been "like I care" to some further article about oh, something about Shane Watson's experience of batting I didn't get more than a couple of sentences into because the man can't seem to think without moving his lips.

All well and good with the batting, but so incredible did it seem that Ponting would call upon him to bowl towards the end of yesterday that when he was quite visibly warming up on the field Christopher Martin-Jenkins expressly discounted the connection between him "doing some violent exercises" and the obvious interpretation, explaining them as "just for the pleasure of giving his body a stretch".

Oh, were it the case. Can anyone match him for momentum-busting? Has any greater gift to the opposing side ever been wheeled out? He is all Trojan Horse with no Greeks. I have scribbled down from the commentators' remarks once his spell commenced: "his contribution with the ball has been generous", "cheap runs", "Trott looks more composed, is growing in confidence", and a shot from Broad – Broad – was so dismissive it was described as "just Go Away". Oh, again, were it the case.

My brain was at breaking point when Ponting persisted with him after the new ball became available. If he'd kept it up for one more over I don't think I would have been able to look at RP for some time and it was damn lucky Siddle redeemed things somewhat. A learned colleague of mine has described Ponting's failing as a captain as a lack of a sense of rhythm, which is clear enough from his acting, but this is insane. Was it the "over rate" thing again? Is Watson going out with his sister? Does he have a sister?

Ricky, please: Socrates also had a snub nose, it does not mean you have to be obtuse.

Things from the rest of Test #3

So, Michael Clarke's new nickname in my loungeroom is "Rasputin", so many sure-death blows did he uncannily survive on his way to 100. Not able to catch him on a legal delivery or persuade his stumps to dislodge, the English eventually tried to "bore" him out, a strategy that became so tedious that when he hit a ball two-thirds of the way to the boundary rope on 96 I half expected the English fielder running after it to give it a good kick along and get it over with.

***

Earlier on Day 5, Shane Warne was captaining the English bowlers from the commentary box: just be patient, be patient, don't try and force it, don't get ahead of yourself, let it come, it'll all come, it'll come in a hurry, relax…










Sorry, where were we?

I'd heard of the "fog" that Warney was able to create in batsmen's minds, but as much as I love Warney—and I love Warney—I hadn't really extrapolated this to other areas, crediting him with more enthusiasm than sensitivity in such domains… until now. I've said enough. Too much. Area Shane!

Conspiracy theory 1

Not only does Nathan Hauritz's haircut appear to be a DIY job but Brett Lee's blonde is also an unpleasant urine-like shade suggestive of self-administered treatment. Have the English, recalling that Warney only started taking serious wickets once he lost the mullet, set up a secret Julio Embargo blocking professional hairdressers from approaching the Australian team? (Whereas Hilfenhaus appeared to get a proper haircut between the 1st and 2nd Tests, presumably before the embargo set in, and his fitness has—THUS—been preserved.)

Conspiracy theory 2

SBS's music selections have taken a confusing turn. They usually play snatches of uptempo songs from hip young Australian bands, eg. Temper Trap's "Science of Fear", which I haven't read too much into since I've just thought it was SBS being modern and Australian and uptempo—until NOW: these lyrics are the world's worst vote of confidence/terrifyingly prescient/might have a lot to answer for. They seem to describe the experience of a car crash happening in slow motion. Hmmm.

On Day 4 they started playing U2's "I Will Follow" – a little confusing, my brain started projecting follow-on situations that didn't exist and didn't really fit the song anyway. But this was nothing compared to Day 5's WTF multi-trumpet instrumental of "Frère Jacques".

Phil Jaques, obviously, but why? And why trumpets? I've heard the ACB can be less than direct when communicating with players, but... ? Theories welcome.

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]