Keeping on Coming

Test match days are long - at least six hours, or 90 overs, depending on who's counting - and so much always depends on which side's players show the most stamina.

Often it's not just about physical fortitude (though God knows you need that), but mental as well. The ability to take the knocks but retain your original level of focus and desire into the last session of the day.

Something I've liked about Peter Siddle ever since I first saw him has been his ability to just keep on coming, regardless of what type of day he's had. Today it wasn't great, but he was still bustling in late in the Cardiff afternoon and was rewarded with the late wickets of Prior and Flintoff, scalps which left honours all but even.

Kevin Pietersen, by contrast, didn't stay focused, and it cost him and his side. His misjudgements at Edgbaston and Kingston were, perhaps, debatable, but today there can be no argument. His moronic stroke was central in allowing Australia to sneak back into a day that was drifting away from them.

It's one thing having the strength to hang in there, but often it's opponents' weaknesses which give you the chance to show it.

Today, for Australia, was one such day.

Almost Time

These days, as a result of what happened in 2005, Ashes series played in England seem bigger than the game itself. As the commencement of battle gets ever closer you can't dip your toe into any branch of the written or broadcast media without coming across people's memories of that great series. And many of them, you suspect, are people who hadn't taken much interest in cricket before and haven't since. Especially during the summary decimation in late 2006 and early 2007 which now seems to have been airbrushed from the collective consciousness of English cricket in a manner of which an old-style totalitarian regime would have been proud.

It's good to have them along for the ride, but, after a while, you just don't want to read any more previews. People can talk for as long as they want about what might happen, what could happen, what should happen. In the end, though, all that matters is what does happen.

With the two sides looking evenly-matched there's every chance of another fine contest.

Let's get started.

Back in Contention

If your first-class career is still in its early stages and you're averaging nearly 70, scoring just 7 and 8 in a match must pull you up a bit short. All in all, it's unlikely that Phil Hughes's double failure at Worcester will have a serious effect on his confidence, but the manner of both his dismissals - caught close in dealing poorly with short balls - is sure to cause some interest among England's bowlers and some concern in the Australian camp.

The bowler who delivered both those balls, Steve Harmison, is another man in an interesting position. After a distinctly average winter it was assumed in some quarters that England's future lay without him, and this may still be the case. But with what he's done at Worcester you wouldn't be at all surprised to see his name at least in contention for a place in Wednesday's side, although, as Harmison himself has said, if England do play two spinners it's hard to see how he'll fit into the team.

Others, such as Graham Onions, would offer more consistency but less pace and hostility, but Harmison has laid a powerful marker down over the last few days at Worcester.

The trouble, as ever, is that no-one can be sure how he's going to bowl on any given day, but that might just be a risk worth taking.

Very Good

How good would England be if they had an opener of style, elegance, adroit footwork and finely crafted techinique who could take Australian bowling attacks apart, seemingly at will? And what if they could also keep wicket and were just twenty years old?

The answer is that they'd be very good. In fact, 'they' are very good.

Her name is Sarah Taylor.

Gift of Timing

With only one subject in town - for a couple of days at least - it's hard not to be repetitive and unoriginal when writing about the end of Michael Vaughan's career.

The first thing to say that is that it didn't come as a surprise. One of the hardest things in the world for a great sportsman to admit is that the past has gone and he has no chance of reclaiming it. But Vaughan is nothing if not decisive, and once he realised that his time in an England shirt had gone for good there was no earthly way he was going step back on to the county treadmill. The modern England captain's financial and spiritual comfort zone - the Sky commentary box - surely awaits, although, for no obvious reason, I think he might just do a little more with the rest of his life, even if it's only coaching.

Two personal memories, both of which I've mentioned here before:

His 197 against India at Trent Bridge in August 2002 was the first time he'd really loosened his shackles at international level and shown what he was capable of. I was there, and I still regard that Saturday afternoon as one of the most enjoyable of my cricket-watching life. No England batsman, except Vaughan himself, has batted with the same blend of dominance and elegance since.

The other is more impressionistic, but when Vaughan was in charge of England in the field everything seemed right with the world. Like Richard Hill, from another time and another sport, or Shivnarine Chanderpaul, you felt that that was what he was put on earth to do. He was no tactical genius, but there was a permanent air of assured command which led you to believe that if there was a particularly tough question, he would always find the answer.

By announcing his retirement during the relative lull between the end of the World Twenty20 and the resumption of the battle for the Ashes, Vaughan has shown that his gift for good timing hasn't completely deserted him.

Time to reflect on the fact that he'll be a long time gone, time also to think about a future without him.

Pear Shaped

Overall, the England selectors haven't come up with a bad series of selections ahead of the Ashes. There was no logical way to select Vaughan (so it's slightly surprising that they didn't), and, as I thought, Onions is a bit ahead of Harmison, although Ashington's finest has an opportunity to state his case at Worcester next week.

However, no announcement of this type is complete without a little bit of madness, and this time it came in the shape of Vikram Solanki. Someone obviously had the idea that the Lions side had to have at least three Worcestershire players in it to give the locals an incentive to turn up (and if that's true what does it say about the parochialism of county supporters?), and, while Steven Davies and Stephen Moore probably deserve to be there, does Solanki?

A decent, occasionally handsome, batsman, who's in good form. But someone whose unfulfilled ODI career is behind him and who is never, surely, going to play Test cricket. If they felt they really had to have another Worcestershire player then Moeen Ali would have been a better choice.

The only real point to Solanki's selection would seem to be to make Owais Shah aware - if he wasn't already - that his own short Test career is a thing of the past.

After Afridi

What more to say about Pakistan's triumph than to say that it was fully deserved and it showed again what a talent Shahid Afridi is and emphasized what a united and simplyinvolved Pakistan side can give to the world game.

As I said at the time of the terrorist attacks in Lahore in March, it's vital that the rest of the world cricket community stands by one of it's most important, but troubled, members.

There are strong rumours that they'll be playing neutral Tests in England (against Australia) next year and that's a start. I look forward to seeing some of their great fans back at Lord's sooner rather than later.