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…this series is sort of like a month-long pass to an Alfred Hitchcock film festival…
- Prem Panicker, Sightscreen, 28.8.05

So, in a series that began with Dial M for Murder and continued with Spellbound, Notorious and Vertigo, England leads Australia two Tests to one. Psycho opens at The Oval on September 8.

Just a few observations after yet another awesome Test match:

• Australia’s batting top order has been saved on so many occasions by one AC Gilchrist blasting a quick ton or so at number seven. Gilchrist’s scores in this series so far: 26, 10, 49*, 1, 30, 4, 27, 11. That’s 158 runs at 22.57.
• If there’s ever a classic case of a captain being as good as the team he leads, take another look at those images of Ricky Ponting holding the 2003 World Cup. There’s one member of the current Australian eleven who has a natural gift for leadership on the field of play and also has a one-day tournament win as captain to show for it. Unfortunately, he has also been a suspended drug cheat, a Pitch and Weather Informant, and has repeatedly demonstrated the value of the mobile phone as a sex aid. At least he has never been bashed up at the Bourbon and Beefsteak.
• We can take either one of two diametrically opposed lessons away from this marvellous Test series, either (a) we can point out that you can’t win from following-on in Twenty20 cricket; or (b) we can praise the richness and diversity of a sport that is capable of giving so much pleasure in all its different forms.

I’ll do more of a Paper Rout, and have some analysis of my own, on Tuesday once a couple of TV shows have gone to air. The Midwinter-Midwinters for Day Four: 3 pts - Shane Warne; 2 pts - Brett Lee; 1 pt - Steve Harmison.

Footnote: A limited release season of Jamaica Inn and Mr and Mrs Smith opens in Bulawayo and Harare from September 13.

The pratt has been removed from this picture. Put an “X” where you think he should be.

Clues can be found here, here, here, here and not here.

Midwinter-Midwinter votes for Saturday: 3 pts - Simon Jones; 2 pts - Justin Langer; 1 pt - Andrew Strauss.

December 24, 1984: Australia loses a women’s Test to England.
September 19, 1988: Australia follows on in a men’s Test match against Pakistan.

August 27, 2005: The next occasion that Australia follows on in a men’s Test.
August 27, 2005: The next occasion Australia loses a women’s Test match.

Happy 97th, Sir Don.

Board’s itinerary goof up leaves team stranded in Bulawayo
Ashish Shukla/Press Trust of India, 27.8.05

The BCCI’s revenge perhaps for player tardiness in Mumbai and Harare?

Come on in, Damien Martyn, your use-by date is up. And you too, Hayden. Don’t you look away either, Kasprowicz.

It was just one awful day for Australia. Infredible. Ingeraintable even. Australia may yet get away with saving the Ashes, but we can already declare England the moral winners.

I’m going to leave the reportage to the only person who could possibly spot Shaun Tait’s legacy, not with Lillee and Thomson, but with the immortal Pat Crawford. Here’s Gideon Haigh’s Ashes Diary on CricInfo, and his reports in the Guardian for Days One and Two.

Midwinter-Midwinters for Day Two: 3 pts - Andrew Flintoff; 2 pts - Geraint Jones; 1 pt - Matthew Hoggard.

I’ve added quite a few more sites to the blogroll on the right-hand side of this page, making a total of 24 in the list. I’ve added the ABC Sports Desk, even though they removed me from their blogroll sometime in the last fortnight… Some stylesheet tidying-up in progress as well. I’m mulling over the prospect of adding some of my older stuff to the current blog as well. Potentially, there could be material stretching back as far as 1994 if I go ahead with that.

The next edition of the podcast is now scheduled for next Friday, September 2. Fortnightly seems a realistic cycle for me. If you’d like to contribute a soundbite to future editions of my podcast, there’s a few options for sending me voicemail, and more about that in a tic.

I’m seeking sponsorship for The Net Sessions - if the world’s first regular cricket podcast can’t pay its own way then it won’t have much of a future, I’m afraid. I’ll write up some info about that shortly, or you can drop me a message.

The release of Google Talk gives another option for voice communication over the internet, though I haven’t tested that side of it yet. I can be contacted at rickeyre(at)gmail(dot)com, and gmail is the method that should be used to send me voicemail attachments via email.

Update 31/8/05: Now that the BBC has linked to this page, I should also add that I have now set up Yahoo! Messenger-with-Voice and (although this too is untested at this moment) you can voicemail me at my Yahoo! address which is, you guessed it, rickeyre.

You can also send voicemail via Skype to rickeyre, or to my new voicemail telephone numbers in Sydney and London:
Sydney - (02) 8569 0397; international +612-8569-0397
London - (020) 7617 7542; international +4420-7617-7542
The usual local or long distance rates apply if calling either of these numbers. Please keep your comments concise, clear and clean.

The ICC announced tonight that their second annual awards presentation will be held in Sydney on October 11. This takes place between the Johnnie Walker one-dayers and the Johnnie Walker six-dayer, which begins at the SCG on the 14th.

The media release from the ICC says that the evening will be held at “one of Australia’s most prestigious hotels”. Sounds to me like they haven’t booked one yet, have they?

Perhaps any fellow Sydneysiders reading this can help in suggesting an appropriate pub for the ICC’s prize night. I’ll nominate the Annandale. Live bands, a Thai bistro out the back, tasteful souvenirs, and it’s only a couple of minutes walk from my place…

Something I thought I would never see, well not in this decade anyway, appears to be unfolding at New Road, Worcester, today.

It’s lunch on Day Three of the Second Women’s Test between England and Australia. The visitors made 131 in their first innings. England, after being 227 for 9 at the close of the second day, advanced to 289 all out. Australia faced sixteen overs before lunch. They are currently 13 for 3.

If England win today, they will take the series 1-0 and reclaim the Women’s Ashes.

If this is Belinda Clark’s final Test for Australia, she is going out on one helluva low. She started this match 101 runs short of being the first Australian woman to score 1000 Test runs (so rare are women’s Test matches). On Wednesday, she made 18 in the first innings. This morning, she added another 2. That’s 919 runs at 45.95. (For the record, seven women have scored 1000 Test runs, five from England and one each from New Zealand and India. They’re listed here.)

Another whose international career appears to be drawing to a close is Clark’s opening partner Lisa Keightley. Immortalised in 1998 as the first woman to score a century at Lord’s, Keightley has scored 11, 0, 5 and 0 in this Test series - 16 runs at 4.00.

As Flintoff surges towards a hundred at Trent Bridge, it’s worth noting the achievements of Kathryn Brunt so far in the Worcester Test, having taken 5/47 in Australia’s first innings and then scoring 52 at number ten, including a last-wicket partnership of 85 with Isa Guha.

A quite historic occasion is unfolding. Let’s hope the British media pay attention tomorrow.

When Tait begins to bowl the batsman trembles at the knees,
The ball comes humming down the pitch just like a hive of bees,
The other day the bails went flying right out to the gate,
The batsman smiled a sickly smile and whispered “Tait á Tait”.

- Jack Lumsdaine, “So This Is Cricket”, 1932
(OK, so he was actually talking about Maurice Tate)

Lillee, Thomson, Tait? It’s a bit damn early for those sort of comparisons I think, but nonetheless Shaun Tait’s first day as Australian cap #392 was a decent enough start. Though, it must be said of a day in which only sixty overs were possible, England is on top at 229 for 4.

I first became aware of Tait when he ripped through Queensland’s top order in a Pura Cup game for South Australia at the Adelaide Oval in February 2003. At the time Paul Rofe was seen as the South Australian pace bowler most likely to be the Next Big Thing for Australian cricket, but while Rofe had McGrathesque accuracy, Tait had pace - and still does.

Tait is certainly a better bowler than his two championship appearances for Dynamo Durham in 2004 indicated (12-0-113-0, w 2, nb 21 against Somerset and 6-0-63-0, nb 5 against Essex). After a no-ballless (torture your spellcheck with that one!) tour game against Worcestershire last week, Tait bowled no-balls 27 to 30 on English soil yesterday. Lee (16-1-75-0, nb 7) and Kasprowicz (18-2-56-0, nb 11) were the real Four n’Twenty Delivery Boys yesterday.

CricInfo has the Arthur Murray Dance Chart of Tait’s bowling on Day One, and it shows how he got his length under control in his second session of the day, claiming the wickets of Trecothick and Bell for his trouble.

The other special mention for the day belongs to Michael Vaughan, who joins Asanka Gurusinha, Jimmy Adams, Moin Khan and Ridley Jacobs in that Pantheon of Legends being the five Test wickets taken by Ricky Ponting. (Here’s those first four.)

A short day Thursday, so the Midwinter-Midwinter points for Day One are: 2 pts - Marcus Trescothick, 1 pt - Michael Vaughan.

Nothing will stop me from cursing the England and Wales Cricket Board for their counterproductive policy of scheduling women’s tours simultaneously with the men. There’s an important, indeed, sudden-death women’s Test match going on at New Road, Worcester which is being totally eclipsed for media attention by the most riveting men’s Ashes series in almost a quarter of a century.

I have to admit that it is also drawing my attention away from the women’s Ashes more than I would like. It’s probably more hope than expectation, but perhaps we’ll see a better deal now that the ICC governs the women’s game.

Play began at Worcester at 3pm on Wednesday, and after 55 overs of play, Australia was 126 for 7. Links to an array of reports on the Cricketwoman World News Wire page (and I really should plug Cricketwoman much more often).

With the reduced day’s play, my Wilson-Snowball votes for Day One are: 2 pts - Jenny Gunn; 1 pt - Lisa Sthalekar.