Until his dismissal today Justin had been on the ground as an active particle in the test match for every single delivery. Roughly 15 straight hours of test cricket.

I heard Justin being interviewed on the radio yesterday in the lunch break. He was being asked about what it means to him to be up there as the years top run scorer in the world, and Justin answered without false modesty, quite frankly that it meant everything to him, he was very excited to be the best and he wasn’t at all ashamed of his pleasure.

Justin also writes a delightful foreword to Matty Hayden’s cookbook. Buy it for someone for christmas and read it before you wrap it up.

This morning, during an awesome burst of pace bowling from Shoaib (at least 9 weet-bix) and Sami, Kim Hughes came on the radio saying ‘this is the best test cricket I’ve ever seen’.

The opening spell was exhilirating, but the rest of the day was a series of depressing let downs. Langer falling 3 runs short of becoming the first batsman ever to score a century in both innings at the Waca. Ponting 2 runs short of his first century as test captain. But most terrible by far, the injury to the great Shoaib. The frustration and agony is pulsing through the world. If he’s not fit for boxing day then what happens to the test series? It loses cricket’s answer to Mario Cipollini. The black triangles filling the angle between Shoaib’s pocket and the seam of his trousers can not be regulation. Surely he must be fined. He absolutely MUST be fit.

During the tea break I fell asleep on the couch with a cat on me.

Another small joy, that really could only count as relief, came when Marto breezed to an easy century just prior to the Australian declaration.

Peter English reported on baggygreen:

‘The batting was entertaining and increased to special status by the afternoon, but it was an indulgence. Australia had built a hotel when all they needed to do was blow down a wobbly shack.’

Justin’s architectural expertise, even his architectural excesses, obviously contributing vitally to the Australian cricket team’s poetic force.

The Perth test, 2nd day, fizzled out. After yesterday’s troubles so far away epic days play, today was very disappointing. Kim Hughes was in deep despair on 774. Pain and frustration, I think he felt like he was witnessing the last day of test match cricket ever, as though he feared test cricket would be axed overnight. He was absolutely despondent and claiming to never have seen worse batting ever.

There was a bit of fun late on when Ponting had a bowl for a few overs – Kim Hughes was disgusted, I thought it was the best part of the afternoon. At least until Pakistan got to bowl again. Now I think we can look forward to another day of Shoaib (he will be fit) and Sami challenging the Australian batsmen. We will just have to forget that there’s been this other innings already and pretend the match has started all over again – another day 1. Pakistan are right up there as a bowling side.

There was a fantastic picture of Shoaib on baggygreen earlier today but its gone now. In fact I can’t really find any good pictures to link to. I do like this one of Shoaib giving Hayden the send off. I can’t believe he might be fined for this, though I guess it makes his performance all the more aberrant & dramatic if he is.

& I did find this little haiku poem on the Age website:

He hobbled off
the ground with
three balls left

& there’s this spectacular new book of cricket poetry available now from… somewhere. (Can I make this a pop-up ad – one that you just can’t close down, that just keeps popping back up?)

Immediately the destructive and extended spell of pace bowling from Pakistan’s speedsters, Shoaib and Sami produced that brand of excitement that only test match cricket can produce. To hear on a quiet radio that Autralia were 5 down for 70 odd, all wickets falling to the two fast guys, certainly stirred the cockles of anticipation. One could only try one’s hardest to stay on at work for another 3 or 4 hours before dashing home to watch the cricket, forgetting about dinner, and all the demands a disgustingly untidy flat makes. By then the match had reached that beautiful point in the evenings play where tiredness has well and truly set in and things start to lazily float along like a cloud, at any moment you expect the players to lie down on the turf with a beer and start sharing anecdotes and inattentively rolled cigarettes. But the gentle toil continued, Langer lethargically lifted Sami back over his head for six and automatically – as though he was already in some sort of state of recurring dream – pulled almost every other delivery to the leg and laconically walked up the pitch to complete his runs. Dizzy was a rock again for a while, a continuing geological process – Dizzy rocks so much. The Pakistani bowlers pushed on, the field spread wide and everyone just waited for the end of the day and the chance to roll out their happily drowsy anecdotes.

It was delightful. Sami and Shoaib looked great. Inzamam looks absolutely fantastic. Langer is very special. He is now in the top ten list of Australia’s all time run scorers, and has equalled David Boon for number of test centuries. There is something very architectural about his inningses. They are very constructed. He inserts blocks of various styles of play alongside or on top of one another in a very calculated way. Understanding the forces acting on his construction and precisely what is needed to prop its dense mass to prevent collapse and to enable continued building. A period of stoic, scratchy defence, having formed itself into a perfect segment of space will be suddenly adjacent to a segment of outright violent attack – timed and situated so perfectly that the segments become one seamless and spreading tower. I don’t know enough about architecture and the engineering that goes into the construction of monuments – i know that the sydney harbour bridge is based on a round of lemon floating on its edge in a glass of schweppes lemonade and that is a lovely thing to think about – but i can’t say too much more about the inspiration, or the influences that Langer draws on. I need an architectural correspondent, to go with my Geology guy.

It was interesting to watch the Dizzy/Langer partnership. Dizzy being formed out of the natural processes of the ages, contrasting Langers overcoding of the natural forces and his application of very precisely determined rules to direct them into a form – the partnership displayed an intensive variation between the way the two batsmen operate and between the two great strata that form the world. Justin constructs a spectacular monument in only a matter of years while Dizzy’s spectacle is built over aeons.

dear trevor hohns

if brett lee doesn’t play in the boxing day test i will tell all the children that you don’t really exist

nick

dear santa

please can brett lee play in the waca test and boxing day

thankyou
from nick

ps drop warnie drop warnie drop warnie drop warnie

from our Sydney correspondent:

I went to the game last night. It was quite amazing. As with the last game I thought Australia was going to post a 500+ run total, with Gilchrist appearing all but indestructible. His innings was one of the greatest I have ever seen. After his innings the game just seemed to be fizzling out. But then Lehmann came and aroused a little interest, before making way for the fun of the last few overs, and Brett-Bix’s hitting.

I couldn’t understand why Styris did as well as he did. From where I was (behind square at the Randwick end, under the Brewongle) he looked decidedly pedestrian. He must have been doing things with the ball that weren’t visible.

Brett was impressive, and bloody quick, surely [break]faster than what the speed gun was showing.

And then in the space of four balls, the game became interesting.

It started to rain properly just as McGrath took Harris out. As if he had been controlling the weather the entire game.

I got what I wanted out of the game. I had wanted an innings from Gilchrist and to see Bre[akfas]tt bowl. I had expected the Aussies to hammer NZ, so an exciting game was a bonus.

Most of the crowd had given up and gone home before it got interesting. And the rest were more interested in building beer cup snakes in an attempt to challenge a very impressive one that had emerged at the bottom of the Doug Walters stand, stretching almost its entire length.

Maybe the kid behind me had a sixth sense. In the first few overs he told his dad that he was nervous because Australia might lose. KW

Appendix: from Ellison Public School’s week 8 newsletter:

Last Friday Year 3 celebrated the start of the cricket season by celebrating with a breakfast. We had Brett-Bix (not Weet-Bix) in honour of Brett Lee. No children quite made it to 7 Brett-Bix, like Brett Lee himself but some reached 5 which was a pretty good effort. Here’s hoping the Aussie team does well this summer.

By the end of the match I was almost willing nz to victory. This game went close to being an epic. If nz had pulled it off it would certainly have crossed that threshold. A remarkable display of hitting from nz’s number 11 batsman, Kyle Mills, including a series of 4 sixes in 4 balls, had them well on the way. An old man with a dislocated shoulder, playing in his 250th one-day international, joined him at the crease to try and push the heroic stakes toward that epic point. Unfortunately Australia’s newest recruit Glenn McGarth secured victory for Australia with a perfect yorker to the old man.

Even in the thick Sydney atmosphere the players were managing to float through the the air, though possibly lacking the easy grace with which they were doing it at the dome.

The good thing about the Australian victory is that we’re now set up for a decider in Brisbane on Friday – from out of nowhere this has become one of the greatest ever one-day series.

how exciting is this!!

It was good to see that everyone was very happy with the result of the one-dayer last night. But one Daniel from North Melbourne had some very interesting points to make about the conditioned atmosphere inside the telstra dome:

“The weather and this game are supposed to go hand in hand,” claimed Daniel from the neighbouring suburb of North Melbourne. “In here it’s more like a mad scientist’s laboratory.” He slumped down in his seat, ignoring the personalised pop-up screen capable of displaying statistics, bowling changes and field placements on demand. “All this high-tech stuff doesn’t mean much to me. It’s a simple game. Why complicate it?” he moaned. “The wind should dictate the bowling. The light should influence the batsman. In here we don’t know if it’s day or night, hot or cold. I’m part of some controlled experiment.”

Perhaps this lack of atmosphere was the cause of all the floating that was going on