Ashes Poetry

1.55pm sarnies eaten, supa-sopas supa-soping, umpires inspecting, arms folded, doesn’t look too good for early start of play. We’re in the upper press box stand, which is twinned with the SCG’s Doug Walters Ashtray, both being old-fashioned exposed slighty crumbly concrete edifices – ‘bit like you, dad’ says my daughter, Laurel, freezing next to me. The coin’s yet to be spun, and if Ponting wins, it could be an interesting decision…. wicket could do something, need to play catch-up, would he ask England to bat, as he did here in 2005, to mass surprise and Antipodean castigation. Everyone, poms and Aussies alike, seem to be on Ricky’s back, and though there may be a poem there, it does seem a little unfair.

Things are getting desperate. We’ve already opened the time-time Hobnobs, and brother Paul’s down to two clues on The Times, and Rudi Koertzen’s said it’s too wet to preclude inspecting before 3.30 – roundly boo-ed under a swift drying wind and warming sun. Met Office have cancelled summer according to the paper’s front page. Ah well, still two crossword clues and three tests to go.

Play starts at five, England bowl like drains, Australia over a hundred for one at stumps. Despite, or because of all the cod tenors, flags and exhortations, things didn’t go to plan…

sometimes the satnav doesn’t seem to work
the car ahead indicates right and turns left
each supermarket trolley has a wonkey wheel
mobile phones go out of signal
and the rain stair-rods in escalators
everywhich way except up

bar staff mishear or you misorder
turning another turns too
drinks collide, profuse apologies
and curses under breath
soggy burgers fall apart
too hurried to wait
umpires gloom at the wicket
under a warm welcome sun
you think sod it

when play does start
the ball comes out of the hand
of the best quicks throughout the land
like a dud burger to be binned
to all parts of the universe

return home to discover the video
didn’t record highlights of your day
and you appreciate for these bowlers
the sat-nav sometimes plays up too

Tweet by tweet commentary

 RSP from Edgbaston Upper Press Box Stand twinned with the Doug Walters Ashtray at SCG, Hughes twits himself out of Green Baggies on Twitter
Next inspection 3.30 The Times declares Met Office has cancelled summer, ECB wheel out cod of a tenor to sing Wall’s Cornetto song Bugger it
Stuff opera, no-one sleeps when Sean Ruane ’sings’ Nessum Dorma, no better since Cardiff, Doing Pavarotti’s grave. Cardus weeps in pressbox.
5.00pm kick-off. Both teams already on pitch warming up since four, crowd querilous why play couldn’t start earlier Now close to tossing off
Ponting wins toss, bats, Watson for Hughes, Bell for Pietersen. Onions preferred to the Harmoniser, who will put who through the blender?
0-43 Katich solid, a Lawry with shots. Watson more flashy, England not bowling straight and without improvements could be in dire straits.
1-85 After ducks and drakes of supa-sopas and delayed starts, enter Swann to lbw Katich swiping Enter Ponting Strauss to reharness Freddie?
1-101 Punter’s 20,000 first-class runs, all first class and I’ve seen far too many of them Super-Centaur Freddy champs at bit to hoof an out
1-126 Stumps

Deus Ex Machina

“All-rounder Flintoff uses Nasa technology to aid recovery while asleep”

…..whirr, whirr, crutch, clutch, whirr, grunch, clunch, wunch, wunderkind, swoosh, swoosh, slosh, gosh, glug-glug-glug-glug-whirr-clung-cling-clong-helmet-clang, bing, bong, bing, yorker, yorker, rip-snorter, tapocatapocata-tapocatapocata, whirr, whirr, whoosh- whash, jigger-jagger-jigger-jagger ramming speed, Mr Zulu, the knee can take it, Cap’n, warp-factor ninety-five miles per hour, outer, outer,outer, inner’s a winner, one more over, onwards a five-for…..whirr, whirr, crutch, clutch, whirr, grunch, clunch, wunch, wunderkind, swoosh, swoosh, slosh, gosh, glug-glug-glug-glug-whirr-clung-cling-clong-helmet-clang, bing, bong, bing, yorker, yorker, rip-snorter, photon torpedo, photon pedalo, tapocatapocata-tapocatapocata, whirr, whirr, whoosh- whash, jigger-jagger-jigger-jagger ramming speed, Mr Zulu, the knee can take it, Cap’n, warp-factor ninety-five miles per hour, outer, outer,outer, inner’s a winner, one more over, onwards a five-for…..

by onomatopoeia from my weary knees I shall rise
and alliterate all Australia

On www.ashespoetry.net you’ll see an photo of the Adelaide Scoreboard, adapted to take tweets from http://twitter.com/ashespoetry to both indicate how the test’s going and also poetic ideas, notes towards drafting a poem for the day. All done in real time, a bit like leaning over the poet’s shoulder while they’re at their craft.

The idea was James Grimster’s of www.orangeleaf.com who designed www.ashespoetry.net I’d never tweeted before, and a joy of tweeting, perhaps the only joy is you have to say what you want to say inside 140 characters including spaces – less to read and to write, win-win.

Stephen Downes, secretary of the Sports Journalists Association, www.sportsjournalists.co.uk suggested this could be a new poetic form. It is. The Delivery.

The ideal  delivery is 140 characters and twenty-two words long. Cricket  buffs will see the connection since a wicket is twenty-yards long too. In other words, the delivery’s poetic metre is in yards, which is fun.

To continue the cricket analogy, if there are less than twenty-two words, it’s short of a length, and more means it’s over-pitched.

The choice of twenty-two words over 140 characters is quite deliberate. It means the average character length of a word is between six and seven. In turn the syllablic length of each word is unlikely to be more than three. Mono, bi and tri-syllabic words make for a strong rhythmic potential.  For example:-

Batsmen swish bats, sight-screens move. Cricket’s longitude is trickier to mark and compass: it lies deep beyond the horizon, inside a ball.

This is necessary since there are no line-breaks. Poetic sense is derived from assonance, alliteration and rhythm, exactly like Anglo-Saxon poetry (Beowulf and similar sagas were originally written without line-breaks.)

The Delivery, if you like, is an Anglo-Saxon or phonetic  equivalent, however rough, of  a haiku, since it deals entirely with sounds, whereas haiku are based on ideographic or pictographic verbal representation.

As such it may be deployed far beyond its original sphere, cricket.

3rd Test Australia v England Sydney Cricket Ground 7,8,10,11 January 1966 (5-day match)

G Boycott b Philpott 84
R W Barber b Hawke 185

Fall of wickets 1:234 (Boycott) …. England won by an innings and 93 runs

Watching Bob

‘Crikey, were fantastic,
they went everywhere,
smashed all around ground.
I said you can’t play like that,
this is a test match, of course you can’t play like that,
you’ll get out before you’re in and then where will we be?
Only he did, kept playing like that, ball after ball,
over after over, even after I went down wicket an’ told him,
you can’t play like that, no one can, except he did, ball after ball,
over after over, past lunch, right through to tea, smashed them everywhere
without a glimmer of a chance. Crikey, it were fantastic.

‘Made eighty-four. Couple of edges, sharp, mind, at reasonable rate:
batting at test match level is never easy, specially against Australia
at Sydney. Of course the best place to play quicks is at the bowler’s end,
I’ve always said that. Not least when your partner’s making runs for fun,
less work for thyssen. Had the best view in the ground. It were watching heaven.
Crikey, it were fantastic.’

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

At least half-a-million people were at Edgbaston to see the three run nail-biter of an English win in 2005. And at least half those half-a-million watched the 1966 World Cup victory, not to mention Roger Bannister’s four minute mile, Sir Len regain the Ashes in 53, Matthew’s Cup Final, Alfred burn the cakes and Beowulf beat Grendel against the odds, but not necessarily all at the same time. Good if there were a similar contest this time round.

Forget groundsman Steve Rouse’s prediction of jelly. A trifling matter: all groundsmen or curators as they’re called in Australia are lugubrious blokes who make Eeyore seem like Ken Dodd. Their wont is to complain of the task they have undertaken together with conditions of works, which clearly has little necessarily in common with the outcome of their labours. (The single exception is in the Windies this century, where groundstaff cheerily predict a great batting wicket, where inside three overs it’s so clearly explosive that a UN mine-clearing squad would evacuate the entire island, and quite possibly the Carribean.) Steve Rouse, (apart from a notorious strip at the end of the last century where Ambrose cleaned out Blighty inside three days) pretty well always produces a decent cricket wicket with a bit for both bat and ball, first pace and then spin. And it is always preceded by the most gloomy of prognostications. The time to really start really worrying would be were Mr Rouse to address the world with a Cheshire cat grin and the words ‘No ifs, no buts, the best wicket I’ve ever produced.’ The ball would swing both ways at once, to cut batsmen in two, literally.

Edgbaston is a cricket-watchers’ ground. No great shakes in terms of looks, (the elegant Victorian pavilion’s always seems half-wrecked within seaweed flotsam of scaffolding,) the wicket  good, the field flat (Lord’s, the home of cricket, has a slope Cardiff wouldn’t and didn’t get away with as a test match venue) with boundaries shaped not to favour one shot or another. Every seat is pretty decent and plenty of room to stretch and amble. Like Cardiff and Lord’s it’s a true cricket ground in that you can walk right around it too.  I like Edgbaston, a lot, but I might be biased since I’m a Warwickshire man.

As such I’d like to see a repeat of Bob Barber’s 185 on Day One of the Third Test at Sydney in 1966. http://www.cricinfo.com/ci/engine/match/62985.html I wasn’t there. I was twelve. I listened to it on the wireless (1500m long wave home service, valves taking time to warm up and smelling of burnt dust) Barber was a stodgy all-rounder for Lancashire till he reinvented himself as winner-takes-all opener for Warwickshire backed up with fairly useful leg-spin. My boyhood hero was going like a train having lapped Boycott about twice before I fell asleep and he was still thundering up Lickey Bank, (Boycs long gone down the sidings back in the shed) when I woke up again….

‘He reached his hundred with a push into the covers, made one wave of the bat, took his cap off briefly and settled back to his innings. His father had arrived in Sydney that day and he reported back the words of a man on the Hill: “Why can’t we have a batsman like this Barber?” Until Virender Sehwag hit 195 on Boxing Day 2003 it stood as the highest score by a batsman on the first day of a Test against Australia. “Bob hit everything in the middle of the bat,” Dennis Silk said. “That innings was sublime. It had the hallmark of real talent.”‘ http://www.cricinfo.com/wisdencricketer/content/story/224857.html

‘Watching Bob’ http://www.ashespoetry.net/2009/07/28/watching-bob/  is a poem written from the other end. Barber’s innings won England the game by an innings, and put them one-up in the series they were to draw. Now as then, England’s win at Lord’s alters the strategy as well as the balance of the series. They can inherit Australia’s “bat longer than they do” dictate, while Australia must win at least one – which they have done at Northampton, and not to be underestimated as well as under-reported: winning warm-up games is always good. Now they have to win, the Green Baggies require more penetration, which is why they might pick Shane Watson, to add to the bowling and the batting. I’m not sure if this’ll work, because it may add to the quantity but not the quality. Who do you leave out? Phillip Hughes? Tough on the guy after three innings, and if he fires he could turn a game inside a session. North? Century at Cardiff, proven in English conditions. … Do you switch any of  the other bowlers, Stuart Clark for Pie-thrower Johnson, or maybe Siddle. Or drop Horitz, leading wicket-taker, and play without a dedicated spinner? The agressive approach is to switch a bowler for a batsman, say Clark for Hughes or North, but then who does the opening, which is where coming on tour with just two openers looks fool-hardy. Justin Langer is making runs down in the cider country and statements about missing the wearing of the Green Baggy one more time….

How about the poms? A positive spin on Mr Achilles’ achilles is that a fit in-form Bell strengthens the side rather than an unfit out-of-form Pietersen. (See poem KP NHS http://www.ashespoetry.net/2009/07/27/kp-nhs/) However even as a Warwickshire man, I’d be loath to suggest ‘Belly’ even if he isn’t a ‘Belly-flop,’ is a potential game-changer like Pietersen. For this reason I’d pick Harmison, to balance the side. It’s clear the Australians don’t like facing Flintoff – who would in his present mood and form? – and Harmison would be more of the same. Like Pietersen in a session he could win you the match. Who to drop? Maybe Onions, or Broad, but I think England will stick with the same attack. Onions gives a bit more control than Harmison, especially on jelly, and Broad’s batting (defensively iffy) becomes more important in the eyes of the cautious who believe Bell is an axomatic weakness. Go for it, put the Aussies through the Harmoniser.

All this being the case, winning the toss becomes ever more important, possibly match-deciding. Strauss has been fortunate twice. At Cardiff by determined batting, Australia reversed England’s fortune. At Lord’s first knock they batted like dorks. One thing for sure, unlike 2005 Ponting won’t bowl if he wins the toss this Thursday. I reckon whoever wins the toss will win the match. Unless weather intervenes, which it might, neither side looks good enough to battle out a draw – oh yes, Cardiff.

No two ways about, if you’re an Australian Fanatic, Lord’s was a dreadful result, nearly as bad, perhaps worse than drawing at Cardiff. Never mind the seventy-four year old Lord’s voodoo going down the clacker – historical records for Australian test teams are only there to be beaten. What’ll hurt is the failure to nail a dead-cert win at Cardiff. Instead of going to Lord’s with six straight thrashings of the poms under your belt, enter the home of cricket level-pegging, the 5-0 last series Strinewash counting for zip. As I said after the first test “If England win the series and the Ashes, Cardiff 2009 may resonate as Headingley 1981.”

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.

The Gun-shear’s crook, gone in the shank.
Jigg’d his achilles; Achilles is knack’d.
You other blokes, better step-up a rank,
The Gun-shear’s crook, fleece their attack.

Swine flu fever jumps cross paddocks,
Through town and country things seem black.
But your NHS’ll shepherd the stock,
Less known heroes shall stall its attack.

 

This is written in the style of Bush Ballads, composed by 19th century poets such as Banjo Paterson, who wrote ‘Waltzing Matilda’ and whose face appears on the $10 note, and Henry Lawson, which is why the latter day Aussie quick, ex Pakistan coach and commentator is nick-named Henry.

A Gun-shearer is the best sheep shearer, where due to the size of Australian flocks, shearing was revolutionised, and the gun-shearer, like Pietersen, was the top man or top gun.

Thanks to Bernard Whimpress for the gun-shearer reference. Bernard also mentioned  Sunday Too Far Away, a classic 1975 Australian film set in the fifties on a station at shearing time http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunday_Too_Far_Away Bernard’s also author of  The Official Ashes Treasure  http://www.wordofsport.com/books/1847323146_the_official_ashes_treasures which is like walking into a museum as well as an excellent book.

From capital to capital, Cardiff to London. The difference could hardly be greater. It was the first test ever in Wales as well as the series, whereas although any test at Lord’s is significant, especially against Australia, it was when all is said and done, just another test.  There were no signs directing people to Thomas Lord’s third ground, no meeters and greeters along the way, because people have been trekking to one or another of Thos Lord’s three grounds since 1787.

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.’

Confiscate all flags, banish their bunting,
kneel to annoit tasks’ end, of labour and doubt.
Warrant and forget. Move on, tests will out
play themselves were celebration-hunting
an honest globe; charted proof maligning
forg’d valour tarnish’d triumph’s petty shout
bought, not earned: mass’d media atout
yells, gawps, misbegotten cousins gloating
dumbs the morrow while the morrow shall beat
each win too vainly commemorated
till the game’s bones break. All brave teams eat
at the same table. Their contest sated,
there will be more, if not more to meet
before time’s great door bequeaths the departed.

2nd Test Lord’s England 425 & 311/6 dec  Australia 215 & 406 England won by 115 runs

Tough luck, Tom Watson, at the Turnberry Open, but if you wanted real-deal sporting thrills and spills this weekend you should have been at Congham, Norfolk for the World Snail Racing Championships (The French are also-rans: they eat their competitors.) It’s bright and breezy July morning, and instead of taking the 13 or 82 bus I’m going to walk to Lord’s; a final pilgrimage of a five day test.

Wandered through Hamstead Heath, getting myself thoroughly lost, (far better than losing, and a good thing to while walking in a park) before bussing down the Finchley Road. I miss the countryside at least as much as home – good to walk through grassland and watch a stag lead roe deer to graze. Of course back in the Peak District we hardly give a second glance to llama, alpaca, buffalo, ostrich (seriously, there may be no tarts in Bakewell, the last one retired about five years ago, more’s still the pity, but local buffalo, not to mention venison is definitely on the menu at the Farmer’s Market.) Almost bought a chopped liver bagel from Harry Morgan’s – my guts are 100% kosher, and yearns Yiddish scran – but settled for their latte. Somehow by lunchtime a chopped liver bagel would lose its appeal, win or lose. I walk through St John’s Wood graveyard and church. Thomas Lord was also involved in the graveyard too. The new pavilion at his new ground was used to celebrate the new cemetery designed to solve the problem of too many charnel houses within the city – London’s surburban sprawl was preceded by the disposal of the dead.

Disposing of the last five Australian wickets is England’s task at hand. I’ve a ground admission ticket which means bedlam to get a half-decent perch more or less behind the bowler’s arm. Behind me a Sheila complains that the MCC confiscated her flag to be returned at the end of play. After Clarke’s and Haddin’s resistance, the end comes quite quickly before lunch, but not before Mitchell Johnson smacked a smart sixty.  The missing flag flags at least the title of today’s poem to celebrate the contest as much as its outcome….

Confiscate All Flags

Confiscate all flags, banish their bunting,
kneel to annoit tasks’ end, of labour and doubt.
Warrant and forget. Move on, tests will out
play themselves were celebration-hunting
an honest globe; charted proof aligning
forg’d valour embreech’d triumph’s petty rout
bought, not earned: mass’d media atout
yells, gawps, misbegotten cousins gloating
dumbs the morrow while the morrow shall beat
each win too vainly commemorated
till the game’s bones break. All brave teams eat
at the same table. Their contest sated,
there will be more, if not more to meet
before time’s great door bequeaths the departed.

2nd Test, Lord’s England 425 & 311/6 dec  Australia 215 & 406 England won by 115 runs

Tweet by Tweet commentary

5-313, Confiscate all flags Celebrate the contest to banish sibling imposters to the lands of wilful ignorance, gloating and selfish rancour
6-313 Haddin edges Fred Supreme Super Centaur to doughty Colllingwood. Ablion Underground test escalators for reopening of the Victory Line.
6-314 Ubermenchpferd Flintoffen cracks Clarke’s bat, clangs helmet but yet to break his dutch boy finger in the dyke standfast resistance.
6-337 Johnson edges Freddie nearly makes it a catch, pitch getting lower and slower. Clarke’s cover drive stings Lord’s grass and confidence
7-356 Swann beats Clarke all ends up through the air, beautiful ball to end magnificent innings Escalators clunch and grind on Victory Line
8-363 Horitz leaves the censorious Centaur alone, off-stump disappears. Poms check back pockets for Victory Line oyster cards, 1934 vintage
9-389 The might of Fred wreck-balls Siddle’s stumps Kneels mid-pitch in five-for exhausted triumph. Johnson’s worthy fifty delays final roar
10-486 Johnson’s long handle bars entry to Victory Line till Swan dips below barriers and 75 year delay over. Wallace Simpson news to come