“Like a gang of pikey chancers, they couldn’t believe their luck at sneaking into the warehouse behind the guard dog’s back, but instead of making off with the goods in a calm and orderly fashion, they decided to whoop and yell and holler, and got themselves evicted anyway.”

The devastating freak accident to McGrath (slipping out to reinvent himself already?), Ponting’s generous decision at the toss (whatever, you guys do what you want, we don’t care), a pitch that McGrath could have made a test century on (oh the agony of lost opportunity!)- yet England make 407. All in one day, to be sure it was exciting but opportunites don’t come much more golden than England had them today, really they should have been 4/407 at stumps, going on to 550ish by tea tomorrow. As a general tendency it seems that the quicker you score your runs the bigger your scores need to be – along with the time you provide to yourself to complete a victory you provide time for counterattacks from the opposition, who also have the same amount of time up their billowing sleeves.

Trescothick was playing such a wonderful innings (I don’t think I’ve ever seen Trescothick play an innings before), such simple movements, barely moving at all but striking the ball with perfection. He was totally putting the Australian bowlers to the sword. Until, on 90, he gave it all away with an awful hanging of the bat’s edge in the path of a widish delivery from Kasprowicz. It was almost sad. English cricket is entirely wasteful. When McGrath went down it was not like all prohecy suddenly went out the window, but the chance that it provided to England was pronounced. England obviously couldn’t get a grip on the thick Spanish accent.