I had a fairly standard route to the ground, and on the Sunday chose to treat myself to a pre-Ashes fried breakfast reading the papers, where one of the broadsides said they’d feature me. No matter they didn’t, had a chat with an African sports lover, where we couldn’t quite figure out the lack of Africans and Afro-Carribeans in the English team. All twenty-two players in this match are caucasians. It struck me walking through the parks around the Oval. Around ten o’clock they were empty. Last century in 1948 they’d be packed with kids playing pick-up cricket games ahead of the Don’s final test innings. Today, two drunk tramps sleeping it off and a rather forlorn middle-aged woman jogger past some media vans parked up by their aerial to send today’s play across the globe. Somehow both the universality and mystery of the game has dwindled. It’s a shame those camera’s didn’t pick up the game of street cricket which had sprung up outside the ground as it had emptied. There’s less enchantment, which poetry or street cricket cannot provide alone. A quality that stands apart from victory if not defeat, for to lose is not to lose all, while to win means only to win a game.

The next day I was interviewed by Radio Derby and read out the final poem Ashes. I did tell them on air it wasn’t celebratory. ‘Oh,’ said the interviewer as we were squeezed inbetween phone-ins about Derby County (’What’s black and white and slides down the table?’) ‘I was expecting something more gloating.’ I’ve never gloated in fifty-six years and I don’t intend to start now. All victories require losses.

Yes, I punched the air when the final Aussie wicket fell. Yes, I was on my feet, and Yes it was great to be there, not least because I’d been at Perth when the Australians were top-dogs last time round. But no I didn’t sing “You’re not singing anymore’ as a few middle-class wannabe mockeney supporters sang. ‘Don’t be daft,’ I told them, ‘they never sang in the first place.’

And yes, I felt uncomfortable when Ben Hilfenhaus was seranaded with ‘Deutchland uber Alles.’ I’ve not a drop of English blood (quarter Austrian, quarter Barvarian, quarter Russian and quarter Ukrainian, to be precise.) Walking back up the Vanxhall Road at the end of the first day’s play,where the Southern Cross was just in the ascendancy, I fell in with a couple of guys about my age. I explained what I was up to, gave them my name. ‘Fine,’ said one, a Scot. ‘David Fine, I knew a David Fine, a tailor in Glasgow, made me my first suit.’ That David Fine was jewish too. Twenty years ago I bought an electric kettle from a Nottingham bric-a-brac shop. Looking at the cheque the shop-keeper said ‘Which bit of Europe did they throw your lot out of.’ His name was Finer, from Lithunania. None are our real names, just those selected, like a test match squad, to avoid potential difficulties.

Where am I going here? Wars, their threat, prejudice and intolerance pull people apart, games can bring them together. That is the charm of cricket, which is why and how C L R James wrote Beyond The Boundary. ‘Those who only know cricket, do not know cricket.’

Enjoy it and best question only its circumstances.

Overall it’s been a crazy series. At Cardiff, Australia should have won by a country mile except they let Anderson and Panesar bat through to an unfeasible draw where a Green Baggy win would have put the Poms behind a road-roller of an eight-ball. Instead England worthily won at Lords’ , an Ashes first since 1934, dismal rain made Edgbaston a draw, while at Headingley a dismal England folded like a pack of cards made from used Kleen-ex, leaving Oz holding a nap hand for the decider…. If you go back to the reflections on Cardiff you’ll find I said ~

“If England win the series and the Ashes, Cardiff 2009 may resonate as Headingley 1981 when Bothamland with Willisshire came back from the dead to win. It was far more demoralising for the Aussies (and therefore far more encouraging for the Poms) to have drawn with one wicket to go, rather than peter out with the final half-hour not taken. This is what should have happened. “

Am I wrong, or am I wrong?

Clearly between Headingley Carnegie and the Brit Oval something switched, and not just ground sponsors. How did the Poms turn themselves around? Even after a disappointing first innings knock, they played like champions-in-waiting, not rabbits waiting for headlights as at Headingley. Throughout the match at crunch-points they showed the better mettle – Broad making the most of a juiced-up strip after the rain in the Australian’s first knock, Strauss and Trott holding out to put on well over a ton in the second inning when being sixty-odd for three and in dire jeopardy, and great fielding to run-out two of the top order and stump the third even if Collingwood, fielding in the slips, his worst position, dropped a couple of good chances. Perhaps Broad and Swann’s defiance on Saturday morning at Leeds was the start of the great come-back. By comparison, the Australian batsmen didn’t seem to graft successfully, where Hussey’s excellent century at the end of the game and series was too much like the little boy with a finger in the dyke (careful now about double-entendres) when the sea had broken through just about everywhere else.

Lack of Australian ‘moral fibre’ is best evidenced in two places. Firstly on the morning of the fourth and final day choosing defensive fields and  leaving Johnson out of the attack till nearly lunch, when he had zipped out Bell and Collingwood for zip  the night before, where had they taken another wicket the game’s pendulum would’ve started to swing their way. It didn’t seem to add up; Australia needed to take wickets not staunch runs: how did the captain and manager and team decide to go all cautious rather than carpe diem? As it was Strauss started to step down the wicket to drive Clark, Stuart, as though facing his namesake Michael Clarke. The second instance was Brad Haddin tripping the light fantastic to  Swann only to hole out to the redoubtable Strauss at long-on. At this point he and Hussey were well set and if they were still there at stumps it’d be two hundred to get with five wickets down – second favourites in a two-horse race. It was the first faint tremblings of Poms’ squidgy bum-time, and better judgement was to place along the ground for a four rather than go arial for a six.

In terms of mettle when being on their mettle, England were past masters at The Oval, so unlike Headingley. As Strauss said afterwards ‘When we’re bad we’re very ba, when we’re good, we’re good enough.’ Very Australian, because good enough isn’t good enough if you’re going to be great.

As so it proved in the ODIs. Punter’s rehab back home did the trick, playing a Captain’s return by blasting England every which way but lose. Interestly the Aussie press didn’t give him any stick for going home, (critics of Trescothick please note) any ire reserved for the manager doing the same – but by then I guess team, skipper and manager could do with a bit of time apart: the intensity of the modern tour schedule must mean you get tired of even good mates at some times. England played like drains but qua Cardiff, managed to thwart the 6-0 ODI Strinewash in the last game, only Ashes are Ashes. Even 6-0 would have been like winning the Cod War after losing Trafalgar. Though Ponting may be the first Australian skipper to lose the Ashes, win them back and lose again in succession, don’t bet on him regaining them again down-under…

                                            It can’t hurt
anymore than this, that’s for sure
Which sets you out to win

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/

Of course if you sit behind the bowler’s arm either at the match or in front of your slippers and tele you are a bona-fide member of the Serious Cricket Watchers Assocation (SCWA rules – 1. watch cricket 2. be serious. All transgressions punished by the utmost levity.) As such the booing of Captain Ponting is a mortal sin. Not because it is boorish, nor because it’ll get Punter’s gander up leading to even more runs to the highest test scoring Aussie bat: both are true. No, because you deny yourself appreciating a truly great player, which is why it’s the communal raspberry from the bleachers – Ian Bell dreams of being booed. The SCWA is debating whether to proscribe the merest ripple of the politest applause since it may arouse those members who find themselves dropping off so seriously have they taken to watching the game – one momentary lapse of concentration and you’re gone – zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

With the MCC World Cricket Committee mooting a Test Match Championship, maybe it’s time to think about not measuring test match durations in days but in overs. In other words, 450 overs must be bowled before the game’s a draw, however many days it takes. It might seem a screwball idea at first but reasons against it aren’t cricketing. Think about it….. 

Working backwards, within the paint tin, Michael Clarke made damned sure Graham Swann got the message loud and clear that his final day dismissal at Lord’s was a fluke, a lucky fluke at that. He kept off-driving the offie for four more or less at will, in preparation for Headingley and the Oval. Why on earth didn’t Strauss stop the flogging earlier? We also learnt Bopara isn’t a test match bowler, and on this evidence his 44 first class victims must still be wondering what they did to get out.

Hussey’s gone a decent way to reinstating himself. He chose the riskier strategy of going for the drive, with plenty of playing and missing. Rightly so. It put very necessary runs on the board, and had he edged it would have flown hard and high. Interesting when he was out two balls before lunch he seemed to pull out of the shot. Watson’s become a decent make-shift opener. Plays straight and gets into line. Overall the Australians saved the game without too much fuss, just as England should have at a belter of a track at Cardiff. Well-played test cricket doesn’t necessarily mean gripping thrills.

Why didn’t England bowl out Australia? Exactly the same at Edgbaston, Vaughan’s last game, against South Africa last year. In India and two tests in the West Indies this winter, not to mention Lord’s when Australia recovered from one-hundred odd for five to over four hundred all out. England don’t seem to have the necessary hardness, gumf, guile, call-it-what-you-will to kill off sides from a winning position in the final innings. Overall England’s attack need helpful conditions to oust the Australian top-order, plus some suicide – the pulls and hooks first innings at Lord’s, or uncertainty how to play swing in the first innings here. Equally Australia don’t seem to have the bowlers for English conditions, Hilfenhaus the exception. However they must be learning, both batsmen and bowlers, whereas there are still question marks dangling against Bopara and Prior at least with the bat, and Broad with the ball. In deed the best English batsman was Flintoff who played a Pietersen innings, 74 from 79 balls, before getting the one unplayable ball from Horitz so far in the series. Cometh the hour, cometh the man. His knee is a desperate worry.

Captain watch. Strauss still remains curious. Why no Anderson from the off on the last day? Ponting seems lonely, not having someone to talk to, leading to micro-management field changes rather than sweeps of strategy. He must be thinking micro-management thoughts all the time, which may explain his lack of runs since Cardiff.

Australia may feel they left Birmingham ahead on points, but the second morning when six wickets fell in double-quick time will haunt.

For me, watching Manou was a joy. Not perfect, but a proper wicket-keeper, not just a bat who happens to keep. Not quite so, Ref Rudi Koertzen. Having written a poem about his 100th test http://www.ashespoetry.net/2009/07/16/koertzen/ detailing the travails of the job, I’m none too critical of him refuting a stone-wall lb against Belly which according to Hawkeye splatted the middle of the middle stump (it may’ve been different were it Punter….) How can anyone tell an umpire’s losing it until he starts to – even himself. You might start singing The Specials’ ‘Message for you, Rudi’ but he’s not nearly as bad as the umpire in Drink Less Miss Less www.youtube.com/watch?v=QbR2HivqRoM starring glamour-puss Jimmy Anderson. My beef was at the end of the fourth day. Play kicked off at lunch and stopped at 7.30 with four overs to go. It should have been three, but Rudi walked so slowly from square leg (maybe that’s why, he’s got them, square legs) that the clock had clunked past the witching hour. In days of yore umpires used to run, or in David Shepherd’s case at England on 111,  hop like an overweight Zebedee, to make sure we got the overs in. It was as bad a piece of delaying play as the batting gloves at Cardiff. Financially Mr Koertzen owes the Edgbaston faithful £20,000 according the calculations made on the back of my £60 ticket (£1 an over, 20,000 crowd = ) Personally the problem with umpires today is that they lack gravitas. Billy Bowden’s crook-fingered sixes are all well and good, but I remember Sid Buller who made Marlon Brando in The Godfather or Apocalypse Now! seem like Mr Bean. You’d never dare question Sid, especially when both of you knew he was wrong. 

Having said that, Australians probably won’t take heart from the half-arsed scragged-out draw at Cardiff at least precluding a 5-0 Blighty-Wash in answer to the 2006-7 drubbing. For all their deodorant ads, Team England just don’t have enough soap to clean up the Baggies completely. 

Only one thing went wrong for Australia at Lord’s outside their control. Losing the toss. This was followed by a truly horrendous bowling performance on the first morning which put England into the driving seat at 196-0. As Kevin Fewster, the Australian Director of the National Maritime Museum put it, meat-pie in hand, ‘This is the Mitchell Johnson.’ Credit the Aussies attack for recovering some measure of control to dismiss England for less than 450 when 600 was on the cards.

Bat well, and the game was drawn. (Remember this is the Green Baggies’ base-line strategy: bat longer than they do.) Here the Australian top-order went bonkers. Perhaps their first innings thrashing of the England attack at Cardiff was still in their minds, but it wasn’t Cardiff at Lord’s. Overcast, the ball moved around a frac, not best conditions for cross-batted shots. Six were out to pulls or hooks. After that the result was pretty well inevitable.

Okay, Strauss could’ve enforced the follow-on, which would have left England needing to make around two-hundred in the last knock, had Australia batted as well in a third innings as they did in the fourth. Strauss could’ve declared later than he did, but five-hundred’s plenty enough in the bank, even if someone sooner or later will chase down five-hundred last innings to win a test. As it happened it allowed both for poor weather and better Aussie batting – a two sessions hundred run plus margin of victory plenty enough when a win is a win. Neither captain is – yet – a Vaughan, Taylor or Brearley, but Strauss must be gaining in confidence, while Ponting seems to be losing his. Ricky’s a decent skipper. Anyone who, after losing at home to South Africa, goes to their patch and thrashes them is a leader. However he may be missing a Gilchrist, Warne and the other senior pros to help with ideas when they are needed to turn things round.

Individually Australia have more worries. Not in their batting where Hughes is the only serious doubt, a left-handed Dougie Walters in the making - but bowling, particularly Mitchell Johnson who in two tests has gone from hero to zero. Haddin’s batting is a plus, though his keeping seems to make the Green Baggies look altogether less than unusually excellent in the field. I like Horitz as an offie. He’s learning to flight the ball – he did Strauss again at Lord’s, and offers a measure of control. Hilfenhaus bends it both ways, and is the most difficult if the slowest of the quicks. Siddle seems to like the short-stuff a bit too much for English conditions, although it may set up victims at the other end. They miss Warne, big-time. At present only Flintoff is a bowler to be feared on either side.

For England, victory may be papering over cracks. Bopara’s yet to reassure still less be secure at No.3. Pietersen on one leg isn’t good enough to merit a place, while Prior looks a murderous test number seven yet a dodgy number six: at least he kept fairly competently, and England were good in the field, hardly spilling a chance, even if they took some which some would say weren’t. Bowling? Jury still out. The attack relies on Flintoff, who from a tired Sisyphus at Cardiff is a hero reborn now he has a mission with an end – win back the Ashes and retire – the ODIs and IPL offering him a life-line to end his test career on a high-note (see http://www.ashespoetry.net/2009/07/21/lords-reflections-beyond-boundaries/) His final day performance at Lord’s was an unstoppable force; fast, ferocious and smart – close to the stumps angling it away, setting up his victims for the one that jags back. On current form he and Ponting are the two world class performers in both teams. Anderson gets better, but still looks hittable once the ball stops doing anything. Broad bowled better than at Cardiff too, his ardour for the short-stuff cooling – too far down the wicket and too easily spotted too early to hurry a decent batman into error. He doesn’t yet have the guile to go with his height, and doesn’t seem to have a clear strategy – either to blast or bore a batsman out. Onions crooked his elbow and knee so a tad hard to judge; more accurate, less quick – England need someone like him to contain if Flintoff is to remain fit as the strike bowler. Swan had a mare at Cardiff, and Clarke  during the second innings at Lord’s drove and drove to which Swan dropped it down and pushed it through, precisely what the batsmen wanted. However on that final day he did the Pup with a wonderfully flighted off-break, which had it not bowled Australia’s putative saviour would have offered Prior the opportunity to demonstrate just how good – or bad – a stumper, rather than keeper, he is. (Because I couldn’t see the wicket itself I did him a disservice at the time seeing the ball evade his grasp, its evil done, ‘Stump ‘im!’ still on my lips.)

Set up nicely for Edgbaston. English and Australian fanatics calculate chances.

Perhaps it’s become too much of a habit. Watching this test match – packed house all five days, the keenest of matches watched and reported worldwide, front page news in each antipodes - you’d have no idea that the very existence of test match cricket is under threat. You’d think it was the only form of the game played, and the limited over stuff (what Brian Close memorably called ‘Slap and Tickle’ at its start) had the limited life-expectancy or consequence. Nothing could be further from the truth. Freddy Flintoff, Ashes hero incarnate, is giving up test cricket at the end of the series to continue One Day Internationals and T20 leagues, which is more than fair enough given the punishment his body’s endured for the sake of England, but this option would never have available to a generation ago. The fact that India is the world cricketing power on and off the pitch is also quitely forgotten while this Ashes series is on – ‘How do you feel about the two next best sides battling it out in Wales?’ I asked Vendat who served me in M&S Just Food outlet next to Cardiff Rail Station. He smiled.

The MCC World Cricket Committee calls for a test championship http://www.lords.org/latest-news/news-archive/wcc-call-for-world-test-championship,1377,NS.html not so much as because there should be one but because of pressure without…

“The committee is deeply concerned that the proliferation of lucrative domestic Twenty20 leagues, such as the Indian Premier League, will lead to the premature retirement of quality international cricketers.”

Qua Flintoff. Pink balls, day-night is all fine and dandy, but what of the championship itself? No one’s clear on that, but it seems they reckon on something like a World Cup… why not a league, with divisions, and each game scores points – one for participating, two for a home draw, three for away draw, four home win, five away win.  This would ensure teams went for victory, and encourage participation – why not Wales, Scotland and Ireland, not to mention Holland, playing in lower divisions.

There is a deeper concern if not threat, if not to cricket, then to Lord’s and the MCC.  Suppose you’d like to become a member of the Marylebone Cricket Club? http://www.lords.org/mcc/membership/ Unless you’re a pretty decent player it’s a seventeen year waiting list, starting at 17, which means the minimum age of members is 34. There is no junior MCC, unlike county clubs for countless years - I became a junior A member of Gloucestershire at the age of nine in 1962 for 10/6d or half-a-guinea if you were posh. You also need to be nominated by four MCC members, so if you don’t know any, tough. Given we’re all living longer, so too the waiting list and age of the membership. It’s hard to see how the MCC will garner new blood, which is fine, but doesn’t sit too well with its self-proclaimed title of ‘home of cricket’ while the pavilion as ‘the cathedral of cricket’ is a poor joke – anyone may enter a cathedral.

Anyone can enter Harry Morgan’s, the best New York deli outside New York. Just round the corner from Lord’s on St John’s High Street, it’s been done up. For the Russians apparently, who like a decent blini or two. In the Australian team are Hilfenhaus, Horitz and Kadich, all good central European names. While England have Strauss, Pietersen – South African – and Flintoff – Viking, name me an England or county cricketer from central Europe; Dimitri Mascarenhas of Hampshire is the closest. And if you’re after dosh, why Sir Alan Stanford, while loads of loaded Russians are already here in London?

If you’re poor it’s different. There are many parts of London which are no-go areas from other areas, especially if you’re young. Either through fear of gangs or other gangs or the police moving you on. It might be West Side Story in txt, mobile phones and rap but it isn’t Lord’s and it’s certainly isn’t cricket. If you wore a hoodie, how would you view those who wear the bacon and egg stripey ties in NW1? An anthropologist may draw no difference between the MCC and a street gang, perhaps noting that the MCC is more enduring due to a written constitution, ability to be socially accepted and control of assets.

This article might well have barred my ever becoming a member of the MCC, if not a street gang, (though I’d probably play the Groucho Marx card of not wishing to join a club which would have me as a member) and I’d probably forgive Marylebone Cricket Club pretty well everything if their members understood the basics of the game. One asked me after turning up after lunch ‘How many overs is it to a new ball?’ ‘Eighty,’ I replied. Should have said 98.6 or the sterling/euro exchange rate, whichever’s lower.

Maybe I’m too prissy too. A joy of going to watch cricket is meeting other cricket-lovers, but the English, especially the middle-class, especially in London, find it hard to talk to people they don’t know (and for all I know they find it just as hard to talk to those they do.) After five days I found myself slipping into the habit. A simple start to making the home of cricket more homely would be for the announcer to announce near the start of play, ‘They’ll be people around you who you don’t know. Why not say hello, shake hands, and enjoy each other’s company as part of your day at Lord’s?  Feel at home at the home of cricket.’

For England to draw was far more than a fluke. It halted a run of five heavy defeats in a row. Add a sixth to the list, and losing would no longer have been a habit, but fast becoming an addiction.

If England win the series and the Ashes, Cardiff 2009 may resonate as Headingley 1981 when Bothamland with Willisshire came back from the dead to win. It was far more demoralising for the Aussies (and therefore far more encouraging for the Poms) to have drawn with one wicket to go, rather than peter out with the final half-hour not taken. This is what should have happened. If Monty and Jimmy can bat out over ten overs, shouldn’t the top order have played well enough never to put them into such a position….

Why’s the England top-order like an MFI wardrobe?
One hammer blow and the whole lot collapses.

A variation on the joke about the final days of the last conservative government, who were similarly compared – one loose screw and the entire cabinet falls apart.

The potential pyschological impact of the draw can be seen by the latest Barmy Army t-shirt celebrating the great escape with Jimmy and Monty on a motorbike http://www.barmyarmy.com/barmyshop/index.php?m=full&productID=130 even though other Jimmy and Billy weren’t there. They wouldn’t have made the t-shirt if the score had been 320 odd for six at stumps.

The Aussies blew it. They forgot the cardinal rule of winning tests: the ability to take twenty wickets. As soon as Monty came in, they reckoned it was over, much in the same way as England entered the final day at Adelaide 2006 already on the plane to Perth, draw in the bag. Instead of a few yorkers straight up, the quicks bowled nothing balls or bouncers, which played into Panesar’s hands. His two best shots are where he aims not to hit the ball – his elegantly OTT front foot leave where the bat does a perfect windmill, or his minimal sway-back to the bouncer. Monty’s never bowled without playing a shot (unlike KP Pietersen) nor hit (unlike Strauss, Bopara and Swann)

This is why Ponting made such a fuss about the changing of batting gloves at Buckingham Palace. He knew they should be one-up and was furious that they weren’t. Perhaps the most decisive captaincy Strauss showed was winning the toss and sending out the gloves. England didn’t seem to have a strategy. Australia has – bat longer than they do, the worst that can happen is a draw. England played two spinners but were reluctant to use them, set run-saving fields on the fourth day when they needed to take wickets, (Mike Brearley wrote well about this in The Observer) and, Collingwood, apart none of the batsmen showed evidence of grit. Cooke and Bopara each have problems playing round their legs (scions of Gooch, who separated out bat lift and feet movement to go through a patch of incessant lbws feet in a bucket) Strauss so much bottom-hand he needs luck to make a score, and Pietersen…. the most talented batsman in the side makes the least of his abilities, while Collingwood, perhaps the least talented makes the most: is this why they bat well together? On the bowling side Fred looked tired on the fourth day, not suprised to hear he’s carrying an bad knee and retiring at the end of the series. Being the side’s totem has become the task of Sisyphus. Broad lacks penetration and the spinners weren’t allowed to bowl too well due to overdefensive fields exploited by Australian batsmen.

The Australian top-order looks awesome. Hughes and Haddin great timers of the ball. Katich an improved player, while Clarke and North would walk into the England side. Ponting is perhaps the best Australian batsman since Bradman, better than Greg Chappell? The quicks look hard and menacing, with Johnson bowling the ball of the match to Collingwood at the start of his second knock: on or just off off-stump, moving away late to miss the edge by a fag-paper. If Collingwood had played back he’d have probably curtain-railed and have gone. Horitz got better – he’s young and if you don’t go after him, he’ll tie you down.

By and large, the wickets taken reflect beginning of term essay results. England 6 out of 20, pretty mediocre. Australia 19 out of 20, almost perfect.

For that reason, and for that reason alone, I reckon Australia will lose at Lords. They haven’t for seventy-four years, so it’s about time they did.

C’ mon England!

Three days later, a great draw was a great draw – of crowds and attention to Wales – notwithstanding Nick Morgan’s comments after Day 4 (why not a Test Match Div 2 - Wales, Ireland, Scotland, Holland ….) The EWCB and Cardiff did a great job in making this the most welcoming of occasions, and the Gods of cricket rewarded them and a capacity final day crowd with a tremendous finale.

This must be the first test series where matches have been played in two capital cities, and Cardiff have put down a marker on and off the pitch for the other venues to strive for. It’s a lovely city, compact and full of culture, and Welshness in a cosmopolitan sense. All the flags of the rugby playing world’s nations are paved into the entries to the Millennium Stadium, (if only so the Welsh can walk over everyone else even before they go onto the pitch)

Talking of contests, behind the scenes a face-off between Swalec and npower (it’s the Swalec stadium, npower the series sponsor) seems to have been decided in favour of npower. I’d like to imagine it was decided by a cricket match between the two plcs with no ringers and winner takes all, but doubtless more diplomatic measures were involved.

“Victory for Cricket” most will say, the fly in the ointment the water spilled on or not as the case may be over Jimmy Anderson’s batting gloves. More ink has been spilled on this being or not being in the spirit of the game, as if it is the greatest moral issue since MPs expenses or the Bodyline series – (Ponting should have quoted a predecessor, Woodfull, who was alleged to have said to the English manager ‘Plum’ Warner “There are two sides out there: one is playing cricket, one is not” That would have really got the pressure cooker cookin’.)

There was one crowd invasion of two blokes. http://www.cricinfo.com/engvaus2009/content/story/413910.html 

They were protesting about Ryanair’s dodgy employment practices. One of their daughters had paid £2500 to be trained up to work for Ryanair, only to be sacked the night before before she started earning. If  I were her da’ I’d have been livid, and if I were going to the cricket the next day…

The sad thing is that the press didn’t pick up on the story, not even that Ryanair’s dodgy employment practices helped save England from certain defeat – it took at least as much time to dump the protesters as it did to dry Anderson’s  wringing wet batting gloves. I feel sorry for the two blokes. It’s no fun being man-handled away against your will (It happened to me two years ago due to wholly inappropriate application of section 2 of the mental health act) and no fun for those who do the man-handling, unless they’re professional sadists. It takes guts to run onto the pitch and know you’ll going to get man-handled off it, and wind up in court. In many ways they showed more far more fight than the England top order. Will what they did help improve Ryanair’s employment practices? Probably not. What else could they have done? Not much. (Remember Ryanair are Irish, with 1 in 6 on the dole: exploitation is all too easy to let go.)

Did what these protesters do go against the spirit of cricket? Cricinfo reckons “The protest was slightly less eventful than that which occured during the Headingley Test of 1975, where vandals forced the abandonment of the third Ashes Test by digging up the pitch prior to the fifth day’s play. On that occasion, the protesters were campaigning for the release of George Davis, a 34-year-old mini-cab driver who had been sentenced to a 20-year sentence for armed robbery. “

The Ryanair Two delayed proceedings by a couple of minutes, not ruin the chances of England winning a test match and levelling the series, if memory serves. Not to pay attention to the cause of their protest soon leads to a cricketing world where the establishment turns a blind eye to apartheid, as originally the case with Basil D’Oliveira.

 What do you think? Reply below, and if you are travelling by Ryan Air remember to tie a knot in it, cross your legs or take some cash since it is a quid a pee in-flight.