the crack is back.
out in the paddock steers sense
danger. A simple few step run
as short as Alan Davidson
but a bloody sight more quick,
left arm, right leg taut as a bow
held by Ursain Bolt at the gun,
no chance to reckon direction
before the whip comes over
Crack! Steers cower at its lash,
unable to go forward or back,
lost in the hurled midst
of the dark stockman’s attack
lashed between arrival and departure
through the paddock gates
till they too crack into failure.
Crack! The crack is back,
out in the paddock steers sense danger
Crack! The go-to’ll do ‘em agin.

It wasn’t quite as bad as the fifth day collapse Tuesday 6th December 2007, Adelaide Oval. That hurts, eighteen months later. The worst performance I’ve ever watched from any England team in any sport anywhere, ever. England self-destructed, end of. See http://www.ashespoetry.net/2009/06/30/adelaide-requiem-for-duff-batting/  and apply the ire to last week at Headingley.

If you saw that result with Zimbawe, Bangladesh, West Indies, New Zealand inked in as the losing team perhaps you’d have thought ‘par for the course. England’ll do better.’ However, overall it was the worst England cricket performance this century, possibly the last and hopefully forever. Australia took four more wickets than the middle order contributed runs. (Broad and Swann’s spirited end-game slog was icing on a half-baked cake of dross.) No need to go into a comparative calculus of crap, the question is why. Forget fire-alarms, no Freddie, Prior’s warm-up injury, Sidebottom’s sidelining, winning a toss to lose, that just a collective bad hair day. We weren’t howitzered because Jimmy’s gell didn’t.

Unlike Adelaide where England outplayed Australia unto the final day, at Headingley the green baggies were at the top of their game, England rock bottom. It was The Cars that Ate Paris where a big-boy’s big V8 pick-up scythes a kiddie’s tricycle. There is something impossibly majestic about an Australian team hell-bent on destruction, so micrometered, slide-ruled and jewelled, Harrison’s cricketing chronometer, they couldn’t stop if they tried. A road-train juggernaut on the Ghan trail, the Gods lizard from under its blazing thunder praying shonky stutters just to survive. The Neilometer purrs. Were I an Aussie, I’d have thought heaven had come early.

At Headingley 2009 they emulated the 1948 Invincibles – against a run-of-the-mill club side.  Clark came back to bowl a stunner, Siddle found the right length and length (in the first innings he bowled one, just one ball down the leg side.) and Johnson was again the bowler who was ruling the world after Christmas, more relaxed, delivery stride marginally shorter or easier, from which all falls into place, the javelin arm a little higher and more accurate – see http://www.ashespoetry.net/2009/08/19/mitchell-johnson/. Oh yes, Hilfenhaus was his usual reliable self. All the edges carried and all the carries stuck, North’s to take Strauss was in Mark Waugh territory, or Phil Sharpe. Simple enough to make runs with caution and aggression alloyed together after that. Hard to think how Australia could have bowled, batted or fielded much better, so even if England had shown some application they’d still been up against it at the crease.

The big difference came in batting. Seven centuries to one says something. Australian players get into line. Watson, a make-shift opener, gets into line, that’s why he’s replaced Phillip Hughes, the one batter who doesn’t. And because Aussie batters get into line, Aussie bowlers have to bowl a tight line too or just get smacked. (It’s a batsmen’s game – don’t make easy for them) How many of the England players get into line, so that back foot, front foot, hands, elbows and head are but a single transect? One. Andrew Flintoff, and perhaps Swan since he can’t get out of line of the short stuff. This is basic technique, the feu of Sir Geoffrey Boycott, and taught at ECB Level One. So why don’t ECB contracted players not do the basic basics? It drives Andy Flower nuts, not least because as he admitted straight afterwards on TMS he had to watch exactly the same thing last year at Headingley against the South Africans.

Perhaps that’s it. Headingley. The ball moves, just a little bit, but not that quick off the wicket. If you don’t get into line that little bit of movement means an edge, a miss rather than something not quite middled. Equally if you’re used to bowling to players who don’t get into line you don’t try to be that accurate, you don’t need to be, they’ll do it for it. Length and line at Headingley with a little bit of movement start to merge into one. The curious thing isn’t that the Australians exploited English conditions to the manor born, perhaps not surprising since they are and practice being #1 test team in the world playing #5. The weird and worrying facet is England batted and bowled at Headingley as though they’d never seen a ball move there in all their born days.

Oval ain’t Headingley….

Watching the Western Stand, it struck me that the Hogarthian vision of The Times’ Thunderer is scarcely more than jolly japes in prep school dorms. Midnight feasts, ragging of other houses and schools, hiding Screwbottom Jnr’s spectacles, building a periscope from pop bottles to peer up Matron’s drawers – is there much difference between that and plastic beer glass snakes? Except the upper classes perhaps got away with more, a lot more, read any Jeeves story by P G Wodehouse and you’ll find Bingo Little and his chums, Gussie Finknottle etc, of the Drones Club – says it all – regularly purloin copper’s helmets, JP’s hats and Wooster’s sang-froid. Prep school and Western Stand share this in common – confinement.

Ten years ago at the England South Africa Headingley Test at the end of the game you could walk onto the pitch, and we did, to make a crowd for the tv coverage as well as taking a dekko at the wicket. You wandered in, weren’t body-searched – one of the blokes remembered me from Edgbaston – could bring in any sort of booze, and more or less do as you pleased. Today you are stewarded, shepherded from one space to another, in very exact, predetermined and restricted fashion. Not much difference to how herds come and go to a modern, safe, efficient and hygenic livestock market. Maybe we have to. It’s a global society with global threats – foot and mouth, terrorism. Maybe we’ve become accustomed, feel safer being searched than not. One thing for sure is confinement leads to rebellion, about as axiomatically as rebellion leads to confinement. Given the length of incarceration, the potential amount of intoxication and tribal tradition, the atmosphere’s good.

It’s not just a matter of control. http://www.theashesfestivalinleeds.com offered more to spectators and the city alike. Yorkshire County Cricket Club have realised that their audience isn’t just the spectators but the city and all of Yorkshire. I reckon Cardiff and Leeds have been best at engaging with the wider world with Leeds just shading it. There’s the real shame that the test was over almost before it began, though the chasm in the revenue stream, if streams can have chasms, must hurt mightily. It was worth coming to Leeds just for the city’s Ashes Festival.

It’s about history too. Tomorrow Yorkshire play Lancashire in the perennial Roses game. http://www.yorkshireccc.com/archive/yorkshire_v_lancashire_lvcc_2009/index.html The original Tudor War of the Roses was by modern standards a relatively tame affair. The Battle of Bosworth Field lasted two hours – more or less England’s first innings – and ploughmen in adjoining fields didn’t even bother to stop and watch or run away. Since the start of this Ashes Series more British servicemen have died in Afghanistan than the ECB has contracted players; more have died than from Swine flu. Is it a necessary war, a just war? You have to decide. 

Deeds empty games, wars empty lives. Both confine their players to battle… http://www.yorkshireccc.com/archive/yorkshire_v_lancashire_lvcc_2009/index.html is also unveiling a blue plaque at Burley for Hedley Verity. He gave his life for his country in Sicily 1943, and the word ‘Engerland’ almost certainly never passed his lips. War of the Roses, WWII are history. All wars are once over, but beforehand decisions need to be made, not merely by government, not by the military from GOC to the spottiest squadie, but by you, for those spotty squadies are dying for you and your country, Engerland. Hogarth didn’t do war. Plastic beer glass snakes or rocket propelled grenades? You have a choice.

To help make up your mind:-

http://www.ashespoetry.net/2009/08/03/hedley-verity/

http://www.ashespoetry.net/2009/07/11/girls-write-poetry/

Headingley Carnegie

In the middle of a stand batsmen discard their creases
to parley twixt jousts, their yeomen chosen duties.
Shuffle pads, box, gloves, helmets, fear and bravery;
lean on pikestaffs to dismiss failure’s haunted taunting,
to discuss the matter at hand, state of play,
how to withhold each wicket whilst withering their enemies’
intent, who may snide cunning cussword cudgels in passing,
as would they, were their innings turned inside out in passing.
Twinned and pinned before overs swap creases, they pass back
to tighten their mark. Their pitch splits again in a middle of a stand,
each readied to face loneliness unyielding.

In the middle of a stand neighbours jowl neighbours:
no loneliness here. Pass comment, beer, jests, victuals, perhaps favour.
Scuffle papers, crosswords, scorecards, programmes, radio-tuners,
cameras, bets, runners and riders (with riders on runners) before –
Roar, Yell, Clap, Cheers, Groan, Moan, Gasp, Ooooo and murmur
at the closeness of it all. Till closeness ends and closure comes,
to stem scored life seen from the very midst of every stand.

Deeds empty games. The ends of each stand leave first,
leaving the last no choice how to enter history. Gainsay no odds,
in each stand at Headingley are memories too many
to bury or resurrect except in their making. Play!

At the wicket Geoff Boycott is filming with Mark Nicholas an art of batsmanship piece for Sky while the two teams warm up in their respective quadrants. I’m sure Boycs is right about getting into line, how to play the rising ball… I’m not nearly so sure whether he’s the qualities to help professional players do just that. They’ll practice, they’ll know where to improve, it’s a question of working out how, which is where coaches come into their own. Listening to Sir Geoffrey may well be like an audiotape of a coaching manual, between 1956 and 1963, Suez and Cuba crises. It’s interesting that the Aussie experts, Ian Chappell, Alan Border, Matthew Hayden, don’t go  forensic on air. At Lord’s first knock just ‘not a wicket for pulls or hooks.’ ‘Nuf said.

Yesterday saw transformation of Mitchell Johnson pie-thrower at the home of cricket to world class quick. His slingy left-arm style, almost Jeff Thompson javelin action gives batsmen so little time to pre-react to the ball once it’s delivered. Maybe a poem there.

Warne and Bishop walk from the pitch, five minutes prior kick-off. Warnie avoids autograph-hunters and desultory booing of Oz Legends, Bishop accepts the line of seven million young and not young autograph hunters. News travels fast, “Ian Bishop’s a dead cert for a cop in the scrap book.” Ground more or less full, but not many bags full of sandwiches. Yorkshire folk have paid for tickets but not over-omptimistic either by nature or inclination. Talking of names, I’ve been spelling Cook with an additional ‘e’ as per Letter From America bod what came from Salford, not Essex. This would make Cook a Cook-e or Cookie, and though he’s batting like a bag of broken biscuits at present, it’s more half than twice baked. I’ve just swan-ed Swann, Clarke’d Clark, in http://twitter.com/ashespoetry and if you spot these ‘errors’ of my ways, blame Doctor Johnson, a Lichfield man, who though he wrote the first English dictionary, never played for England or Lichfield, nor Dictionaries. As a man of letters with a forthright way, he’d appreciate how Peter Siddle has lettered Swann’s ribcage with a short one. Those Aussies have worked him out – Swann doesn’t know how to duck.

England make a fist of a busted flush, Broad and Swann slogging towards the horizon of respectability – see Tweet by Tweet Commentary at foot of this post. It’s great entertainment but test cricket, Headingley test cricket isn’t just entertainment. Just after lunch it’s over, and all square in the series. Marcus North man of a match given by Iron Mike for an Athertonesque innings. Jim Maxwell notes third or fourth Aussie win in three days at Headingley (there better not be a fifth) before suggesting a timeless test at the Oval as the series goes to final game all square – quite rare in recent times at least.

I’m struck how both Broad and Swann, and Clarke and North each talked to one another during their stands made under very different circumstances…

Headingley Carnegie

In the middle of a stand batsmen discard their creases
to parley twixt jousts, their yeomen chosen duties.
Shuffle pads, box, gloves, helmets, fear and bravery;
lean on pikestaffs to dismiss failure’s haunted taunting,
to discuss the matter at hand, state of play,
how to withhold each wicket whilst withering their enemies’
intent, who may snide cunning cussword cudgels in passing,
as would they, were their innings turned inside out in passing.
Twinned and pinned before overs swap creases, they pass back
to tighten their mark. Their pitch splits again in a middle of a stand,
each readied to face loneliness unyielding.

In the middle of a stand neighbours jowl neighbours:
no loneliness here. Pass comment, beer, jests, victuals, perhaps favour.
Scuffle papers, crosswords, scorecards, programmes, radio-tuners,
cameras, bets, runners and riders (with riders on runners) before –
Roar, Yell, Clap, Cheers, Groan, Moan, Gasp, Ooooo and murmur
at the closeness of it all. Till closeness ends and closure comes,
to stem scored life seen from the very midst of every stand.

Deeds empty games. The ends of each stand leave first,
leaving the last no choice how to enter history. Gainsay no odds,
in each stand at Headingley are memories too many
to bury or resurrect except in their making. Play!

Tweet by Tweet Commentary

90-6 Prior dab-slashes Johnson through 4th slip to fence as he’s practiced in nets before. Punter puts 4th slip in, Prior unlikely to last..

104-6 Broad flashes at everthing Ball ageing, nothing in pitch, Prior fours Johnson two more full-toss pies, small acorn-filled Leaves next 

124-7 Prior follows Hilfenhaus outswinger Haddin one-handed catch. Could’ve left it alone (Prior and I guess Haddin) Fat Lady loosens corset

141-7 thwacks and chances aplenty Hilefenhaus they say can only bowl outswingers but also off-cutter which slices Swan in two as a lame duck

@saltpublishing Will Jen finish cycling 60 Suffolk miles before Australia level series in Yorkshire? On your bikes you poms

148-7 Vicious Sid Siddle bounces Swann but Swann’s learnt to hook 195 runs behind, the merest of bagatelles Ball doing zip late only from hand

178-7 V S Siddle just bowled eight wides in a row. Maybe he is V S Naipul in disguise. Will ask Paul Theroux to adjudicate.

193-7 Broad’s fifty, flashy in more ways than one Swann giving it some humpage too while Clark puts it in the slot gun-barrel straight 201-7

205-7 Stuart Clark 2-0-32-0 this morning acknowledges Western Stand cheers with rueful wave Who said Australians aren’t good sportsmen?

193-7 Broad’s fifty, flashy in more ways than one Swann giving it some humpage too while Clark puts it in the slot gun-barrel straight 201-7

205-7 Stuart Clark 2-0-32-0 this morning acknowledges Western Stand cheers with rueful wave Who said Australians aren’t good sportsmen?

215-7 Johnson nearly catches Broad hoick to long-off boundary. Crowd delighted Green Baggy slips confere. 100 partnership from 73 balls -123 adrift

224-7 Broad hook splits two long-legs Clark 3-0-42-0 Replay screen shows Punter micro-managing his fingernails. Broad finally out hooking

228-8 Johnson replaces expensive Clark. Tail-order hi-jinks shows it could’ve been a contest had England top order batted.It doesn’t add up.

230-8 Umpires not sure of number of balls in an over. Swann top-edges Siddle for six and fifty. Harmie offers batting advice and glove touch

243-8 Harmie gets four and one through point of opportunity, his favoured land. Leg drive not in repetoire Crowd cheer double figure deficit

245-8 North’s fingers cops Swann at mid-off, a moth flutters south – float like a butterfly, sting like a bee. Lunch just to please fat Gatt

247-8 Crowd had their Gattings for lunch. Johnson to shorten the Harmison with a throat ball. Katich short leg, Harmie doesn’t play off pads

250-8 “Stand up if yer 1-0 up” Two legside fours for Harmie. Swann edges Johnson ct Haddin 259-9 Fat Lady squeezes Sean Ruane to her bosoms

259-9 Clark sussed his line to Harmison, middle and off short of a length. One on leg through midwicket to ropes without moving his feet.

263-10 Johnson removes Onions’ off-stump 5-69. Australia win by innings and 89 runs. Could have been a wider margin, should’ve been far less….

“So it goes” Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughter House Five

The Bloke Up Your Arse

For it isn’t your sheila or mucker or strife
Whose judgment gets right up your arse.
The bastard whose verdict counts most in your life
Is the one sledging you back to the past.

Don’t come the Plum Warner or W G
And make out you’re real dinki di,
The bloke up your clacker’ll drop you down dunny
If you can’t squiz him right in the eye.

The dial to appease, bugger the MCC,
Will voodoo your quince to take the final Test.
We’ll sledge you till you’ve karked it, RIP
- ’cos us Aussies’ll have rippered the rest.

Poms cringe before playing matches,
Shonky bludgers let loose the bowels of fear:
No drama, dead certs to throw up the Ashes,
They can’t cheat the green baggies between their ears.

an adaptation of The Man in The Glass originally written in 1934 by American Peter ‘Dale’ Wimbrow Senior and used by Zimbabwean Duncan Fletcher, England coach to motivate the team at the final test in 2005 against Australia (The Coach’s Story: Ashes Regained, Duncan Fletcher) …..

The Man in The Glass

 For it isn’t your father or mother or wife
Whose judgment upon you must pass.
The fellow whose verdict counts most in your life
Is the one staring back from the glass

You may be like Jack Horner and chisel a plum,
And think you’re a wonderful guy,
But the man in the glass says you’re only a bum
If you can’t look him straight in the eye.

He’s the fellow to please, never mind all the rest,
For he’s with you clear to the end,
And you’ve passed your most dangerous, difficult test
If the man in the glass is your friend.

You may fool the whole world down the pathway of years,
And get pats on the back as you pass,
But your final reward will be heartache and tears,
If you’ve cheated the man in the glass.

I like Headingley. It’s a proper cricket ground because you can walk all around it. Even better it has the rugby ground next door, sharing a stand, with the pitch full of the suits’ motors – black VW Toureg’s with tinted windows, 4×4 Raybans, VW, the people’s car? – overblown, like a pack of English rugby forwards. I take delight in knowing I’ll be away in NuNuChuggalino, our Y-reg Corsa, parked five minutes walk from the ground. Everyone should walk, especially when they’re out, and I can’t figure out why cricket spectators won’t when who they’re watching will amble at least several miles a day, even from slip to slip.

You can tell I’m trying to avoid yesterday’s cricket. The next time England play Australia at Headingley we’re in for another hammering – at Rugby League, never mind the VW Touregs  (And what sort of name is that? I can’t think of a car more unlike a Bedoin tribesman.)

Still avoiding. All part of the grieving process – surprise, disbelief, anger, avoidance, denial, more surprise, disbelief, anger, avoidance and denial till you accept we got stuffed. Ian Bishop is just below signing all the Asda Kwik cricketers autograph books, temples whitening, specs hanging from his neck looking for all like an elder statesmen but still lithe enough to have bowled a decent spell yesterday. He’s writing a message with each signature (unlike Nasser Hussein whose moniker’s the briefest nurdle of the nib – the pen’s edgier than the blade, Nas.)

Ten minutes to go, ground half-full, no avoiding it now. Forget the five-thirty fire alarm, Prior’s back spasm, Flintoff’s fitness, these things happen to happen all the time. Get on with it. The Australians prepared for Headingley. Their batsmen practiced playing in swing conditions, as did their bowlers – what better net bowlers could you have than Hilfenhaus and Clark? Did England? One thing for sure, it’s easy enough to assess which team’s brittle, and which is resilient.

There is a part in Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited when Charles Ryder, the narrator, describes the pain of being hurt in the same emotional place twice. A bruise being bruised again. At 82-5 second knock all England must feel that pain. Bad enough Australia made 455, effectively sealing the game. To bat again and collapse again so brutally is the second percussive trauma upon trauma. And they/we were doing so well, 58-0 all four quicks seen off, Ponting micro-managing at the bowler’s end (you know when Punter’s getting really worried – watch for the teapot elbows and then the fingers to the lips) around a dozen overs to go, not scoring too quickly but we could perhaps should get to stumps without losing a wicket. ….”One thing for sure, it’s easy enough to assess which team’s brittle, and which is resilient.”

There are technical reasons, which Sir Geoffrey Boycott explained ad nauseam on Test Match Special according to my daughter and wife, who had thought sledging was what fielders did to prevent fours. Fundamentally England players don’t get into line. Fatal against a Mitchell Johnson on form. Watching Watson is instructive, a makeshift opener, he gets into line and made three successive fifties. He came in for Hughes, the one Australian bat who doesn’t get into line. Even more instructive is watching the Kwik Cricket batting, all leg-side slogs from wickets arranged so they go into the stands. Crowd-pleasing, but not one shot in three tests through the off-side elbow high. The next generation of England cricketers not getting into line. God knows what Sir Geoffrey thought having been inducted into the ICC Hall of Fame with Trueman and Rhodes, nor Iron Mike Atherton, a solitary figure walking from commentary box to pavilion at tea and the close of play. Each of them got into line. It doesn’t look good.

At 50-0 my poem of the day was ‘In the Middle of a Stand’ switching from batsmen’s and fielder’s parleys at the wicket to spectators in the stands. The ink dried in my pen. You’ve doubtless become bored with my banging on about the incessant ‘C’mon England’ on the replay screens, exhortations from Boris Johnson, Stephen Fry, Connie Huk…. (let’s make Paul Collingwood Mayor of London, Ian Bell compere QED and Ravi Bopara Blue Peter) and Jerusalem at the head of each session. Premature triumphalism, which is a polysyllabic way of articulating total bollocks. It can only distract players from the task at hand, who already have to play Australia not only on the pitch but increasingly within their own heads….

… I’ve cheated again. An unholy prediction of the 2006-7 series, from the Ashes Poetry basement tapes (the ones that didn’t get on the 2006-7 website) is The Bloke Up Your Arse. Written before going to Oz in 2006 to get more of a feel for Aussie sporting mentality, lingo and to reprise The Man in The Glass originally written in 1934 by American Peter ‘Dale’ Wimbrow Senior and used by Zimbabwean Duncan Fletcher, England coach to motivate the team at the final test in 2005 against Australia (The Coach’s Story: Ashes Regained, Duncan Fletcher….. It worked then, along with the weather and Warnie dropping a dolly off KP, and the Aussies have their own version of The Man in The Glass – GHL or Good Hard Look.)

The final verse is the killer, the final line the clincher –  They can’t cheat the green baggies between their ears.

The Bloke Up Your Arse

For it isn’t your sheila or mucker or strife
Whose judgment gets right up your arse.
The bastard whose verdict counts most in your life
Is the one sledging you back to the past.

Don’t come the Plum Warner or W G
And make out you’re real dinki di,
The bloke up your clacker’ll drop you down dunny
If you can’t squiz him right in the eye.

The dial to appease, bugger the MCC,
Will voodoo your quince to take the final Test.
We’ll sledge you till you’ve karked it, RIP
- ’cos us Aussies’ll have rippered the rest.

Poms cringe before playing matches,
Shonky bludgers let loose the bowels of fear:
No drama, dead certs to throw up the Ashes,
They can’t cheat the green baggies between their ears.

Tweet by Tweet Commentary – poms with a nervous disposition should look away now

4-208 Second over in, two fours, just con-trails in the sky, not even rain may save Australia from their avowed Ashes destiny at Headingley.

4-221 Jimmy bowls the Pup perfect pitched-up outswinger, going late but eighteen hours too late in the proceedings. Ground full, murmuring

4-237 Clarke starts flashing, North has a word, immaculate off-drive To paraphrase Tom Waits, if you want to bat well you better get in line

4-251 Century partnership Western Stand chants Michael Vaughan, my Lord Might as well as halejuah Wilfred Rhodes Lord Hawke and Ilkley Moor

4-261 Twin-engined turbo-prop, flaps and undercart down coming into land at Leeds/Bradford, got more chance of taking a wicket than England.

4-264 Swann to bowl. Will Clarke try to Edgbaston him out of the match? Decent first maiden, Strauss micro-managing from the guru Ponting.

4-274 Lord High Micro-Manager Strauss only bloke in sun-hat rest caps. Missing Lucy Mabel Atwell Freddie in field, not just for dress sense

4-289 replay screen Buxton a drop of pure England going down the drain. Onions to be barbequed into npower Ashes Product placement rules.

4-300 North 50 8 overs to new ball 15 minutes lunch Swann still niggling North, Clarke cruising. Put the Bet Fair Blimp onto bowl, Straussie

5-303 just when England staring down both barrels, Onions lbs Clarke 93. In Oz Neilometer still set fair with Vegemite rosy cheeks all aglow

5-318 Harmie sprays down leg-side, four bye-byes to fan’s Jerusalem. Give William Blake a bowl. New ball Harmie cramps Haddin on hook 6-323.

6-324 Onions in for Anderson as new pie-chucker Does this mean Jimmy and Broad have had their chips for bowling Yorkshire Puddings at Leeds?

6-334 Harmie gloves Johnson to fly overheard North hardly magnetic: late late show bid in Bill Lawry look-alike contest England bowl better

6-344 Swannee also in sun-hat – is he next Lord High Micromanager of all Engerland. Sun gone in and ball starts to wobble. Australia doesn’t

6-350 North blats three 4s, England bowling best so far, new ball & high cloud, fast accurate and dangerous – a strumpet’s period, too late?

6-352 “Get well soon Freddie” light plane banners overhead http://www.mumtaz.co.uk/ Lord Gower of Swish and John Morris not at the controls.

6-356 http://www.mumtaz.co.uk/ plane down in flames from Gooch & Gatting 4×40mm Flak Cannone. Onions has Johnson in a pickle stuck on seven.

6-357 Broad for Harmison first ball long hop square cut four All pressure gone. England still think North can’t play off-side Johnson off 7

6-361 npower loft insulation ad in drinks break, about preventing skiers when hitting on the up. Johnson 2×4 Onions.Sun out ball now unnewed

6-374 Swann first ball down leg-side, four, second spun away from Johnson. Third arm ball shout for LB Last ball too short cut for four more

7-393 just when poms can’t buy a wicket on e-bay Johnson hooks Broad straight down Bopara’s throat

7-393 Peter Siddle looks surprisingly innocent in a batting helmet May well be expecting some retributive short stuff bowled 1st ball 8-394.

8-406 North’s 100 six over cow corner off Swann R U watching KP? Lead 304 At least England won’t be asked to follow on. Why Strauss batted?

8-417 Clarke sixes Swann straight over the cameras, and another brace over square. For you viewers at home it beats being hit in the box.

8-439 Fanatics pipe up “R U Holland in disguise?” If only Clark plays on for an uncomplicateed 32 leaving Broad 5-91 Strauss won’t delay tea

10-445 but Strauss does and North holes out to long on. Twenty minutes for England to figure out how to erase 342 deficit Extra bat rubbers?

2-0 Talking to Yorkshire cheese-lovers (none called Wallace) reckon 102-2 at stumps They being Yorkshire cheese-lovers think four in the bag

4-0 two no-balls. To paraphrase Wilfred Rhodes, just induced into ICC Hall of Fame, we’ll get them in no-balls. Strauss cuts square for four

Notts County 3 Bradford 0 That should raise a cheer among the locals while the Western Stand play with their balls before they’re confiscated

17-0 two tarty fours from Cooke (fur coat no knickers) look good but not fully in control of stroke. Clark limbering up to give acid test.

18-0 Western Stand raising the volume if not the tone. All very prep school, mid-night feasts after lights out, trying to rag the prefects.

25-0 Oz bowling budgie-smuggler tight. Will Mitchell Johnson deliver pies with Onions? Nearly beheads Strauss Cooke finds it hot in kitchen.

28-0 Drinks Break – only if the plastic glasses split?

46-0 Johnson meeting out the short stuff, Cooke and Strauss try to hook, voluntary euthenasia with two Oz morticians set deep for the shot.

50-0 17 to 1 odds on a draw. Worth a punt to get up Punter’s nose. Yorkshire Cheese Lovers delighted and not just with (Yorkshire) cheese.

58-1 Strauss, Lord High Protector of England and her Commonweath LBW. Bopara ditto next ball, Bell in on a hat-trick, plays and misses Ooer!

67-3 Bell c Ponting b Johnson 3 Fanatics tell England & Barmy Army “You’re shit and you know you are” A very rare Australian understatement.

74-4 Collingwood lbw Johnson 4 Gloomiest prognostications of Yorkshire Cneese Lovers prove all too true Too many cats will be kicked tonite

78-5 Cook cooked. Netbook hibernates before battery gives up ghost which England have done

Dent steel
pummel resolve
grind hope
cleave partnerships
hammer blows
sandblast egos
shatter morale
catch catches
file appeals
cast dies
hewer luck
mould chances
anneal fortune
enamel success
forge victory
dent their steel
till it rusts

www.dentsteel.co.uk

 To Siddle – a verb

I bowl
you score
we curse
you all

I bowl
I hit
you’re hurt
I sledge

I bowl
you glove
he catches
you’re out

I bowl
you miss
we shout
they give it
you’re out

I bowl
you’re XXXXed

Stuart Clark

Not that you’d notice him for seeing,
the sort of bloke in the office
who always comes to work on time
to a tidy desk all parts done efficiently
yesterday.
Pays the drinks kitty and sweepstake
promptly
and tells the sharpest stories about the bosses
secretly
(not that you notice him for seeing.) 

The sort of bloke troubled mothers of errant daughters
pray they’d bring home and yet leave them well alone.
That bank managers take to, perhaps trusting too much too.
Eyes that remember distant birthdays and colours of others eyes.
The sort of waiter you can ask what’s best on the menu,
tip well, and instinctively say thank you to,
and instantaneously forget in our ever-rushed lives
too busy to notice him for seeing.

Nothing too complicated nor too much
to do for others. As his arm comes over
batsmen fear any minor deviations
- not that you’d notice them for seeing.