Now that’s Test cricket!

My only complaints have to do with our boys giving away their wickets – Strauss in particular, who really needs to bed in and lead from the front. I could cope better if he had KP’s personality, but he doesn’t – he’s thoughtful, intelligent and steady most of the time, and he just seems to be losing his head. Bell and Cook are young, one can forgive them (well, a bit) some impatience. As for Bell, he has progressed so quickly, he’s unrecognisable from last year’s “Deer in the headlights walking wicket” – and he gave us a hard fought half century in the first match.
Strauss just seems AWOL at the moment…and we need the player who scored big innings in 2005 – both to shape the match and to steady the ship – back again. Can’t help but wonder if the captaincy wouldn’t have done that for him.

I know why Stuart Clark bowled so few overs – it was cause Ricky Ponting got him confused him with Michael Clarke who bowled 10 overs in the last session. [:d]

A very solid day for England, even if it fell a bit short of what might have been accomplished with the bat, even if a lot of us are scratching our heads over Monty not being in the squad. First, it’s disconcerting to see Strauss fail three times in a row for small scores, and Cook get out just as he is getting played in. Second, on that fairly benign wicket England should have got to 300 runs. Still, those are minor concerns in the big scheme balanced against the immediate need to show that the crushing defeat at Brisbane was not a good indicator of the relationships between the teams.

What was excellent was how Bell and Collingwood showed discipline and patience (old test cricket virtues) to blunt the Aussie attack. At 45-2 with the unknown Stuart Clark looking very dangerous and uncannily McGrath-like England could have had another batting disaster on its hands. Instead a solid platform was built from which the highly entertaining and energetic post-tea counterattack was launched.

Very nice to see Bell get another controlled, organized, patient 50. Too bad it wasn’t more, but he’s showing a lot of class and poise at #3, and more importantly a refusal to be anyone’s victim. What a difference 18 months makes. What we saw in his batting against Pakistan is being underscored, and an Ashes ton will surely be coming soon. The selectors were absolutely correct to persevere with him.

Collingwood’s ability to adapt his play to the needs of the situation made him the perfect foil for Pietersen’s last hour smash-and-grab raid. In fact, even though he’s the junior partner in that pairing, if you look at his contribution he added quite a few runs himself. It just seemed like he was doing a lot less run-accumulating than Pietersen because of his lower-key approach. It’s too soon to say he’s got the measure of Warne, but he played him extremely well back-to-back, which is far more than I’d expected.

For day 2 nothing less than a total of 450 will do. 500 would be nice. 550 even better. All followed by a late-evening full-bore go at their openers. A smooth and sensible start followed by putting the Aussies back on their heels. Set the stage so that when Flintoff and Jones come in it will be about piling on the pressure. Make Ponting pay for only having four front-line bowlers. Make him either bowl McGrath a lot and risk his suspect heel breaking down or bowl his part-time spinner (Clarke, who actually did a pretty decent job) or his part-time medium-pacers (Hussey and himself) in a stock role to give Lee, Clark and Warne breathers. And run the risk of getting carted by England’s 4-5-6-7. Which will be just fine with me.

Anyway, this day was much more like it. While one day’s quality play doesn’t make a series it does show that there’s going to be a real contest for 5 matches. We wanted an Ashes rumble. England showed it’s got lads with mettle who can stand up to the Aussies on their turf and not back down, which was a big “?” without Vaughan, without Trescothick, without Simon Jones. If we can just get it right with the ball (“paging Grievous Bodily Harmison, not his pod-person imposter double”) this series can go the distance with every game being meaningful.