We Could Be Heroes

With India again dismantled and humiliated in an away Test series, questions, changes and further problems will surely follow. Duncan Fletcher, for one, must be wondering what the hell he's got himself into.

All the greats, suddenly and not so suddenly, appear to be slipping. Tendulkar looks good but can't make a century; Dravid, last summer's form increasingly looking like a mirage, has his stumps broken almost every time he goes to the wicket; Laxman is a prisoner of his own hesitancy and Sehwag is going through one of those periods - and they've always been there - when he looks a simplistic, shallow player, without footwork or runs.

With changes now certain other questions will be prompted, the most obvious of all being to ask how a country with a population of more than a billion people, where cricket is followed with ultimate fanaticism, can't produce a better team than this.

In time, new heroes - Yadav, Kohli, perhaps Pujara and Raina - will emerge, but things, for India, may well get worse before they get better.

Australia, meanwhile, go forward. They have a bowling attack which is adhering to the basics with persistence and skill (and they haven't required much more against these opponents), they have a captain who is a magnificent batsman and is in the runs, and they have Warner.

Warner who will soon assume Sehwag's mantle - in fact perhaps he already has - as the greatest attacking opener in the world. Warner who, with insouciant logic, pointed out that there often aren't many fielders in front of the wicket in Test cricket. Warner who, as someone said on the television yesterday, is changing the game. Warner who is the first world-class cricketer to graduate to Test cricket from the game's shortest form.

Warner is this week's all-Australian hero. For English cricket, even without its national team in action, this has been a challenging week. Its hero is a man that I saw bowl with impressive pace and verve for Derbyshire last season at a time when nobody knew anything about his role in the most concerning story to hit the county game in many years.

This week's English cricket hero is Tony Palladino.

A Long Road Ahead

In many ways Shane Watson is representative of the difficulties faced by his side, the only diference being that he was (at least while he lasted) in something resembling decent form.

Talented, sincere and competitive, but also lacking in concentration, fitness, and, when it comes to running between the wickets, basic technique, he's made a decent fist of filling one of the openers' berths in the Australian side over the last eighteen months. One's suspicion is, though, that his natural home lies further down the order and that he ought to be bowling more, and with more intent, than he currently does. Given his history of injuries, this is partially understandable, but, watching him over the last couple of Tests, it was hard not to think of him as a player who simply isn't achieving anything like his potential and wouldn't be worth a place in the England side.

He's not alone.

Everyone knew before the series started that Australia were in decline. This impression was confirmed and hastened by some strange decisions by their selectors and the confidence, virility and power of England. For now Watson himself, Khawaja, Hussey, Clarke (who, let no-one forget, is a superb batsman) and possibly Ponting offer the nucleus of a batting order, but Hussey and Ponting will soon be gone for good and the bowling cupboard looks bare. Some extra work on fielding, fitness and running is essential.

All the things that are being said about Australia now used to be said about England. For them it's been a long road back, starting with the appointment of Duncan Fletcher as coach in 1999 and the subsequent adoption of central contracts.

For Australia it will be no different.

Leaving Nothing Behind

I've found it hard to get too concerned about the story which has been preoccupying the media these last few days, and which has only just been supplanted by the announcement of Andrew Flintoff's retirement from Test cricket.

England were clearly out of order in doing what they did, at least as far as the oft-quoted 'spirit of the game' is concerned (although, significantly, neither umpire appeared to say anything), and it's hardly surprising that Ponting told Bilal Shafayat where to go when he arrived in the middle on Sunday night. But his comments once the match had ended and the dust had settled were, in reality, relatively moderate, and it took the good old British press to turn a disagreement into a controversy.

Neither side can reasonably claim any moral high ground. England did what they did and Australia - as Nathan Hauritz admitted - would have done the same if they'd needed to. Anyone who has had the misfortune to read Duncan Fletcher's autobiography knows that he is never ever wrong about anything (at least in his own mind), but, when he starts sticking his oar in, you tend to feel that it's time to move on.

Which bring us to Flintoff, who, for once, has shown some timing and good sense in taking a decision which has come to seem inevitable as his Test career has blundered on in fits and starts over the past few years.

The valedictions can be saved for later; in the meantime, let's hope he makes it through the last four five-day games of his life.

One thing is certain: He won't be leaving anything behind in the dressing room.

Shah's Time

After what happened in Mumbai yesterday, which is bound to cast a shadow - and very possibly curtail - England's tour, it seems a bit passe to bang on about the inadequacies of English selection, but it's an easy target, so why not? With England posting a decent total but still losing at a canter yesterday, you were left wondering what on earth Alastair Cook was doing there, but, more specifically, what has Owais Shah done to deserve such consistently inconsistent treatment?

Having made 72 at number three in Bangalore (to add to his 58 in Indore earlier in the series), Shah was again shunted down to six, from which position he made a coruscating 66* in support of Pietersen's century. With everyone rightly adamant that England need more ODI centuries, and Collingwood once more in awful form, it seems illogical that Shah hasn't been trusted with a higher position in the order throughout the series.

Shah has been an international since 2001 but his career at the top level has taken a long time to mature. His fielding was initially a real weakness and is often ponderous still, while his right-hand dominated technique is hardly a thing of beauty and can tend to detract from his very real qualities of class, confidence and aggression.

All the evidence was that Duncan Fletcher didn't trust him, but Moores and his selectors have at least seemed happy to give him a run in the side, and Pietersen, as an attacking batsman of genius, recognizes him as a kindred spirit.

With just two Tests behind him (an impressive Mumbai debut in 2006 and a nerve-ridden one-off against the West Indies at Lord's in 2007), now increasingly appears to be the time to look again at Shah's credentials in the longer game, and I fervently hope he gets the opportunity to show what he can do.

Whether that opportunity comes in India before Christmas remains to be seen.

After Fletcher

It was both pleasing and interesting to see Ryan Sidebottom and Graeme Swann playing their parts in England's latest victory over Sri Lanka. Both are players who played a single game for England - Sidebottom a Test, Swann a one-day international - in the early years of Duncan Fletcher's stewardship of the England side. Neither impressed, both were forgotten. Swann said recently that he never spoke to Fletcher again after his tour to South Africa, but, in 2007, both have come back to the side to show how much they've developed in the intervening years and, perhaps, how much England were missing for all that time.

Leaving the intervening South African adventure to one side, there have been enough signs in the home series with India and this one that England, under Peter Moores, are at least putting themselves in a position from which they can improve the most dismal ODI record of the major nations. It seems highly likely that Sidebottom and Swann will be part of that, and Stuart Broad, of the neophyte's freshness and the veteran's mentality, is certain to do so.

Indeed, with Broad, whose straight bat and cool temperament should ensure he'll make plenty of runs at international level to go with the wickets which are a given, it's simply a matter of when he gets into the Test side. Once he's there he'll be there for ever (or it'll sure seem like it).

The Long Road Back

The omissions and inclusions in the latest list of centrally-contracted England players were predictable, but I was heartened and pleased by the return to the ODI side of Graeme Swann, who hasn't had so much as a sniff of a place in the squad since he went to South Africa around the turn of the millennium and was thought to have upset Duncan Fletcher with his insouciant attitude.

At age-group level in England Swann was one of the more talented players of his generation and a member, alongside Owais Shah and Robert Key (and a few other county journeymen like Stephen Peters) of the side which won the under-19 World Cup in early 1998. Later that year he made a sparkling start to his career with Northants -I particularly remember innings of 92 and 111 from number eight in a losing cause at Leicester - and, when he was called up to the England side at the end of the decade, his future looked assured. Somehow, though, it never really happened. The years since have seen him falter at Northampton, move to Nottingham, struggle to make a consistent impression in the first-class game but develop into a dangerous operator in limited-overs cricket with both bat and ball, and retain the enthusiasm and humour which made him stand out back then.

He's another example of the type of player - like Ryan Sidebottom - who would never have found a way back into 'Team England' under Fletcher's dogmatic stewardship, and the resurrection of players like this is as good a retrospective argument for Fletcher's replacement with Peter Moores as I've found. And it was instructive to hear Swann himself say last night that Sidebottom's recall and the success that followed it was one of the main things which gave him hope that he too could find a way back.

And now, with the England ODI side finally looking like it could be moving in the right direction, is a pretty good time to return. With Panesar's continuing inability to reproduce his Test form and Swann's batting and fielding potential, a longer-term place in the side could be well within reach of a player who seems to have been around for a very long time but is only 28.

I hope he makes it.

Out Cold

After their performance at Lord's it was disappointing, even sad, but nevertheless predictable, that the West Indies, now without Lara, Chanderpaul and Sarwan, their three best contemporary batsmen by a mile, should have folded to their worst defeat in nearly eighty years of Test cricket in the frozen wastes of Headingley. The only player who seemed up for the fight (and not for the first time) was Trinidad's excellent Dwayne Bravo. As Andrew Miller said on Cricinfo, this is the worst collection of players ever to represent the islands, and it showed.

England were as efficient and competent as they needed to be in the face of the negligible threat posed by a team with a weak attack and an even weaker batting line-up, supported by weak fielding.

The batting (minus Andrew Strauss) is firing from top to bottom, the re-selection of Ryan Sidebottom, inconceivable under Fletcher, was, in retrospect, a masterstroke, and the entire side looks a different unit when Vaughan's in charge.

They look good, although, against this West Indian side it would be hard not to.

As Stephen Fleming said, when asked how you recover from the type of beating which England took in Australia, 'Play someone else'.

Predictability

The England squad for the first Test against the West Indies, announced earlier this morning by David Graveney, was quite predictable, even though it contained a couple of players who I'm sure wouldn't have been there if Duncan Fletcher had still been in charge.

As I wrote a few weeks ago, I always had a feeling that Matthew Prior would secure the wicket-keeper's spot ahead of Paul Nixon, chiefly because of his past links with Peter Moores. In a sense it's hard on Nixon, who did everything that could have been asked of him (and more) during his short time in the side, but, at 36, he was never going to be there for very long. Of course, there are no guarantees that Prior will do any better than any of the other glovemen who've been tried over the last four years but he probably deserves a go, if only on account of his first-class career batting average which nudges a heady forty. I've seen very little of him - and nothing live - so I'll be interested to see how he goes at Lord's.

As a break with the past it's also good to see Owais Shah in the squad, although he'll only play if Pietersen isn't fit. While his stilted ODI career has been a largely hesitant affair, both with the bat and especially in the field, he's always been a potential Test player of quality, something which he fully demonstrated in Mumbai last year. It's nice to know that Moores recognises his quality in a way that I don't believe Fletcher did.

Liam Plunkett takes the fourth seamer's position ahead of Anderson and Mahmood, which will do for the time being. Mahmood in particular looks like someone who could do with playing a bit more county cricket (perhaps a whole career's worth) and there are still doubts over Anderson. However, Plunkett himslef needs to start producing his best with a bit more regularity if he's to prevent the selectors looking towards Broad and Onions.

I'll be at Lord's for the game and if the weather allows enough play I expect an England win well inside five days. The West Indies will be lacking practice against the red ball (they're not goung to get any play at Taunton today as it's pouring down) and they usually seem to lack motivation these days. Harmison and Hoggard are both bowling well and England also have plenty of batsmen in form.

Fletcher Has Gone

In the end there was no way out. For the best part of seven years he did little but good for England but, from the time he went back to Giles and Jones in preference to Read and Panesar, he was destined to be history if it didn't work out.

The Ashes series didn't and the World Cup was never going to.

A good summary of his life and times by Andrew Miller is here.

Humiliation

The only conceivable surprise about South Africa's slaughter of England yesterday was that it was quite so quick. Let's face it, with a few notable exceptions (Sharjah 1997, Champions Trophy 2004, CB Series 2007), England have been useless at one-day cricket for years and years and years.

I'm going to take a back seat and let the dust settle for a few days before I say anything else, but most of the British papers seem to be calling for Fletcher's head and, having first done so back in December, I can't see myself bucking the trend now. It's encouraging also that there appears to be widespread recognition that Vaughan's ODI career, never very distinguished, has also run its course. I'm instinctively dubious about the concept of having different captains in Test and one-day cricket, but England simply can't go on like this.

Having seemingly played most of the tournament with only one proper batsman, it was always going to be tough for England when he failed. Throw in a complete inability to take advantage of powerplays in the way that the better sides do, add the consistently inconsistent - and often utterly dreadful - bowling of Sajid Mahmood and Flintoff's range of form and discipline issues and you have a recipe for disaster.

Looking to the longer term, it's difficult at the moment to feel other than that the only good to come out of England's 'campaign' is the feeling that the whole flimsy house of cards has been brought crashing down and that change is now inevitable.

And Ravi Bopara.

Drifting into Life

With England and South Africa readying themselves for battle in Barbados, there's just time to refer to the fact that the English season has drifted into life.

It was good - and unsurprising - to see Alastair Cook begin his season with a big hundred for MCC v Sussex, and even better to see Owais Shah do the same.

While Shah seems to have drifted back to the fringes of England contention since his excellent debut in Mumbai in early 2006, I firmly believe that he could have a lot to offer England in the future. Like a lot of people, though, he probably needs Fletcher to be shown the exit door to get another chance to show what he can really do.

Sounding Off

With the World Cup looming it was interesting and in some ways pleasing to have the clock turned back to the autumn and to hear that Chris Read had spoken of his disappointment at the way he was treated by Duncan Fletcher in the early stages of England's tour of Australia. Perhaps the only surprise was that he hadn't done so already, but then again it was hardly likely that he would start sounding off while the tour was still going on, especially as he did, eventually, make it back into the side at the expense of Fletcher's long-time favourite, Geraint Jones (and whatever happened to him?).

However, the relative moderation of Read's language (he gave a typically quietly-spoken and articulate interview in which he used the word 'bewildering' to describe his treatment) pointed to one of his central problems and perhaps the major reason, together with his batting, why he (and, in all probability, Jones) is history at Test level - the fact that, unlike the blessed Paul Nixon, he isn't (so those in authority doubtless think) quite voluble or aggressive enough. For weeks now the media's been full of the choicest cuts from Nixon's repertoire of sledges, and there's been little wrong with that, other than the fact that one likes to think that there should be a bit more store set on how well you can keep and bat, rather than how well (how crudely, how bluntly) you can wind up the opposition. This said, Nixon has ticked those boxes well enough too and appears to me to be nailed on to start the 2007 English season as England's Test keeper, unless something goes drastically wrong in the West Indies.

Unlike a good many people I was relatively ambivalent about the selection of Jones at the start of the Ashes series, mainly, I think, because I couldn't see Read functioning very well with the bat in Australian conditions and also because I reckoned that Fletcher never really liked Read anyway and seemed to have a bit of an obsession with Jones. To me the recall of Jones for Brisbane seemed inevitable, so perhaps, subconsciously I felt it wasn't worth fussing about it. With hindsight, though, it was a glaringly disrespectful piece of man mismanagement and Fletcher still stands condemned as a result of it.

True, the late victories in the CB Series have bought him some time but I'll still be surprised if he's not gone before the end of the year, whether or not (and it will surely be not) England win the World Cup.

Chris Read seems a very level-headed and sensible man, probably the type to forgive and forget as he resumes the county career which will probably be his main source of income well into the future.

I don't think, though, that he'll be inviting Duncan round for tea anytime soon.

Fulminating

My favourite part of Miller's piece (link below) was his description of Chris Read 'sitting in fulminating silence' next to Duncan Fletcher and having to resist the temptation to slap him.

It wouldn't be a great career move, Chris, but then, with Fletcher in charge, what would it matter? I don't think he ever really rated you and he now probably just views you as a nuisance who won't go away.

I heard on the radio this morning that Fletcher had stated that he felt that he still held the confidence of the players.

Well, that's as maybe. But how many of his side are going to stick their heads above the parapet and say that they don't have confidence in him while he's still in charge? Nobody who wants to be picked again in a hurry, that's for sure.

On the other hand, most of England's finest seem so incapable of departing from ECB-approved media-speak that they find it even more difficult to say something incisive or interesting than they do to play well in one-day cricket.

And that is saying something.

Moving On

England's fate, and the reasons for it, has been analysed to death in the media over the past few days. Certain aspects of it are impossible to dispute (unless, of course, you're Duncan Fletcher or Andrew Flintoff), namely that England's preparation for the series was inadequate and the team's selection chronically flawed, especially for the first two Tests. Add to that the fact that they were without a number of their most important players from the 2005 series and were up against the world's best side, playing at home and desperate to beat them, and they were in trouble from the start.

While I've said here before that I think England would benefit from a change of coach, I also feel that it's important to keep their failings in perspective. They haven't suddenly become the world's worst team as a result of events in Australia and I expect them to do well this summer in their home Test series against West Indies and India. Also, with Warne and McGrath finally gone, it's inevitable that Australia will start to come back towards the chasing pack, and, providing England identify their failings and move on, building their side around players such as Bell, Cook and Panesar, there's every prospect of a close series in England in 2009. However, if they go on pretending that they couldn't have done any more, they've got no chance.

What I'm less sure about, in the short term, is the panicky re-appointment of Michael Vaughan as captain for the forthcoming one-day series, something which is covered very well by Andrew Miller on Cricinfo.

Miller quotes David Graveney as saying that, while mistakes had been made, the appointment of Flintoff as captain wasn't one of them. In which case, why remove him in the middle of the tour and replace him with someone who has a mediocre record in one-day international cricket anyway, and whose fitness, because of his complete lack of exposure to top-level cricket over recent months, must remain under intense scrutiny? A few games for the England Academy and MCC (with hardly any runs to speak of) bear about as much relation to an ODI series against Australia and New Zealand as one of my village games does to a County Championship match.

It could all end in tears.

I hope it doesn't.

Fletcher Must Go

Typical. You take a few days off from the blog to get ready for Christmas and let the dust settle after the end of the Ashes and, far from settling, it continues to swirl around you like the fog that's been blanketing much of Britain this week. The past, present and future of English cricket is debated to death, and, just by way of variety, another crackpot squad emerges from the brains of the England selectors. Oh, and Shane Warne retires.

Virtually everything you can think of (and a few things which you can't) has been said about England after Perth. And most of it carries a fair bit of truth. They were under-prepared, the Brisbane and Adelaide teams were badly selected, Australia have wanted to regain the Ashes more than England have wanted to retain them, and Fletcher has reached his sell-by date. All that and a one-day squad with Paul Nixon in it.

One of the better analyses of England's situation came from Christopher Martin-Jenkins in The Times earlier in the week, which allowed for the fact that England have played some good cricket at times by pointing out that the genesis of England's defeat lay in one really bad day in each game - the first in Brisbane, the last in Adelaide and the second in Perth - but also mentioned the older but more far-reaching errors which conspired to put England in a position from which retention was going to be much more difficult than redemption. The loss of Troy Cooley to his native Australia, the failure to prepare properly, errant selection, going back to the inclusion of Giles and Trescothick in the original squad ('an element of trying to recreate the old rather than trusting the new'), the decision to make Flintoff captain 'just as Strauss had grown into the job'.

It was a balanced critique and I agreed with most of it. It appeared to stop short, however, of calling for Fletcher's head, as most of the British tabloids have been doing, and, having thought over the series, while not denying how well England have played in parts or Fletcher's seminal influence on the improvements shown by the England side since 1999, I'm inclined to feel that we need to look elsewhere when the dust really has settled after this winter.

Justification? Well, we'll leave Monty out of it and return to the old Jones-Read debate. Thanks to Fletcher's misplaced confidence in the increasingly hapless Jones, we're now left with a situation where, if Read returns to the side in Melbourne (and, such is Fletcher's apparent obsession with Jones, I'm still not convinced that he will), he will do so in the knowledge that his own coach doesn't rate him at all, which can only have a negative effect on his confidence. So, we'll be left with two keepers who know that they're not first choice, a fact which was emphasized further yesterday when England's squad for the post-Christmas ODI series was announced. It contained the name of Paul Nixon, the elderly Leicestershire keeper who went on an England tour a few years ago but was generally felt to have dropped off the radar. I'll leave my favourite, Steven Davies, out of it for once; he's been with the academy in Perth and may not have done as well as was hoped. But what about James Foster? He was looking absolutely excellent late last season and is a hell of a lot younger than Nixon. Madness.

And then you have the inclusion of Vaughan. Okay, he's standing up, but he's only got three failures against Western Australia seconds behind him and his record in one-day cricket isn't very good anyway. Another example of trying to clutch at the straws of 2005 rather than moving on.

Past readers of this blog will know right well that, although I've known about and watched Chris Read for a long time, I'm not one of those people (most of whom live in Nottingham, I find) who think that he's the best keeper who ever drew breath. I even sought to try to understand Fletcher's selection of Jones at the start of the series (mainly because I just wasn't suprised), but, with hindsight, I was wrong.

With everything else left aside (Giles v Panesar is history), for his utterly shameful treatment of Read and his clumsily mistaken faith in Jones alone, Fletcher must go.

We'll look at this again when it's 3-2...

Gathering Shadows

So much has been written and said about team selection, Duncan Fletcher, Ashley Giles, Monty Panesar, Andrew Flintoff, Michael Vaughan and the past, present and future of English cricket since the Adelaide capitulation last Tuesday that it's easy to lose track of where your own opinions begin and where those of other people end.

Personally I could understand the logic of starting the tour with Giles in the side, if only because his presence shortens the tail to a far greater degree than that of Panesar (or Anderson or Mahmood for that matter). And it must be remembered that he made useful contributions with the bat in the first three innings of the series. However, it was asking a lot of someone who has never been a consistently threatening bowler at Test level to return to the side after a year's absence and prove penetrative on unresponsive wickets against some of the best players of spin in the world. And so it has proved. Giles has been handled with ease by all the Australian batsmen and with disdain by their two best players, Ponting and Hussey. Overall, though, there's little question in my mind that two spinners should have been played at Adelaide, and, if only one was required for Brisbane, it should have been Panesar. The batting problem could have been eased by playing Sajid Mahmood instead of Jimmy Anderson, who's also looked utterly impotent. Mahmood has had an inconsistent England career so far but he's a better batsman than Anderson and could hardly have been more innocuous with the ball.

With all that said, I'm very dubious about the hype being attached to Panesar by the perenially impulsive British media, many of whom (who never gave a damn about cricket until August 2005) seem to feel that he's a panacea for all England's problems. He's an extremely promising bowler, England's best spin discovery for generations, but his figures in the few games he's played in Australia have not been especially impressive, indicating that he's taking time to adapt to conditions which are alien and unhelpful to him. Also, in case anyone hasn't noticed, he's a rather limited batsman (if more talented than he's given credit for) and the main reason England lost in Adelaide was because the batting failed on the final day. It's important that his potential value to the side is kept in perspective or the age-old tendency of the British media to build people up with excessive and unjust praise before knocking them down with withering and unjust criticism will come into view again.

A further aspect of this which has been doing the rounds in Britain is the story that Duncan Fletcher, who has hitherto taken all the blame for the omission of Panesar, in fact wanted him in the Adelaide team but was overruled by his captain. Nobody - except Duncan and Freddie - knows the exact truth of this, and we'll have to wait for Duncan's autobiography to (perhaps) find out, but, if that was the case it points to a classic blind spot of the modern English cricketer - the way in which seam bowlers, however mediocre, are valued more highly than spinners.

And Flintoff has history here, don't forget. Last May, in Panesar's first Test in this country, he gave him just 27 overs out of 199 in a Sri Lankan total of 537, while at the same time bowling himself into the ground. All Panesar's successes later in the summer came under the leadership of Andrew Strauss. Even allowing for Fletcher's sometimes grudging attitude towards Panesar last summer, it may just be Flintoff, and not Fletcher, who has a blind spot when it comes to Monty's potential.

Whatever the case, it's hard to escape the feeling that the shadows are gathering on Fletcher's term of office as England coach. It's virtually inconceivable that the Ashes can be retained now and further humiliation awaits at the World Cup. Fletcher has been an incredibly influential figure in the renaissance of English cricket these past seven years, but am I the only person who feels that we may be at the point where England require a little more than his grim-faced, pedestrian conservatism?

Blame

With England in such a mess I decided to lie low for a few days to let the dust settle. Not that it's done anything of the sort.

The media are blaming Fletcher, Fletcher's blaming the batsmen, the supporters are blaming Giles (and Fletcher) and Flintoff's not blaming anybody. Apart from 'one bad hour', Adelaide went quite well. Sure, Freddie.

All a bit messy, and then there's Vaughan as well. Andrew Miller has made a valiant attempt to make sense of it all here.

A Different Feel

Well, I said on Sunday that the series now had a much more even feel to it. That was premature, but it certainly has a different feel now. It feels like Australia are 2-0 up and an odds-on bet to regain the Ashes.

After following the action from the early hours via radio and television I'm too tired to come up with anything massively analytical or coherent, but I did see enough to realise that, well though Warne bowled, a series of England players (notably Pietersen, Flintoff and Jones) contributed to their own downfall and the humiliation of their side with poorly-conceived and badly-executed strokes.

It's something Flintoff does again and again. It's a habit he must kick (and fast) if he's not going to seem more and more like an outstanding seam bowler who can slog a few rustic runs on a good day, rather than the pedigree all-rounder he is capable of being.

Jones we know all about. He's chiefly in the side because of his batting. Which is a pity, as his batting continues to plough the furrow of mediocrity which it has occupied since the Lahore Test a year ago. But he needn't worry. It's clear that his place in the side is safe for as long as he wants it. Which, of course, is part of the problem.

And it's best not to get started on the team selection. Jimmy Anderson currently has two wickets in the series at an average in excess of 150. I reckon Monty would have done a bit better than that.

Try telling that to Fletcher, though. Who, of course, is part of the problem.

Vaughan is Back (Well, Sort Of)

In a week for straw clutching I suppose we should all rejoice at the news that Michael Vaughan has finally made it back on to a cricket field, for the England Academy against the Western Australia Second XI.

Apparently a few of members of the press corps decided to pop over to Perth from Adelaide to see the great man and were rewarded by seeing him get out for a duck.

It was earlier reported on Radio Five Live that he'd left the field while fielding but that the good old ECB media management department had stated that there was 'nothing to worry about'. Doubtless so, but you just know that they'd still say that if he'd just had his leg amputated below the knee in the dressing room, so it's pretty hard to tell what's going on.

Vaughan is making optimistic noises but I'm sure we won't see him in the Test series (Fletcher has said as much). Best just to let him get on with his rehabilitation and hope to see him in the VB series in the new year. Indeed, England are such a poor one-day side that even someone with Vaughan's mediocre record in the short form of the game might improve their chances.

We'll see. In the meantime, the Cathedral End beckons...

Digging In, Getting Out

A better day for England, with Collingwood and Pietersen both making runs impressively enough to concern Australia a bit, if not about the prospect of defeat, about the prospect of what their media will say if they fail to win.

At the risk of sounding like Geoff Boycott, who's doing a very good job of sounding like himself on Test Match Special, I was disappointed with the way in which Collingwood, and especially Flintoff, got out.

Boycott regularly bemoans the fact that nobody is prepared to play the type of long, attritional innings which is required to secure draws in Test cricket from the type of position which England found themselves in after the third day, and the way in which Collingwood and Pietersen were playing when I got up (with Collingwood on 92) seemed more in keeping with the later stages of an ODI.

It all looked a little bit too frantic and it wasn't that surprising when Colly got himself stumped on 96. Which brought Flintoff to the crease. Having got to 16 with the aid of some superb shots (one cover drive on the up off Lee was vintage Freddie) he carved an ugly hoick to Langer at long on off Warne. For a player with his talent, Flintoff remains depressingly prone to this type of dismissal, and it seems to me that he needs to become a bit less prone to it if England are really going to compete in the series.

With all that said, they have at least shown that they can compete, and, with KP still there on 92 there's a wafer thin chance that they can get out of Brisbane with a draw tomorrow.

But the new ball beckons, and so does England's fragile tail, so it's still odds against. Time for young Geraint to produce the runs which Duncan always seems to be expecting?