the lead up to the commencement of todays play felt hauntingly similar to the lead up to the 5th day at adelaide. australia needed wkts quick, one or two big partnerships could take the game away from them. at 11.43am on day 5 in adelaide strauss was given out caught at short leg and an english collapse ensued. replays showed that strauss had been hard done by, the ball coming straight off the pad with no involvement from the bat. at 11.43am in perth today strauss was given out caught behind. there was certainly a sound like ball hitting bat but replays showed that the two never met. from this point on england struggled.

in cricket time is never continuous. segments of time repeat themselves or appear out of sequence. many remember before the historic ashes series in 05 that mcgrath predicted a 5-0 result to australia. mcgrath predicted the same result previous to this series. there have been those who have laughed at for his tired prophetic attempts. but there is another possibility. in fact mcgrath only ever predicted the 5-0 result for the current ashes series. the moment of the prediction entered a purely cricket appropriate slippage and appeared prior to the 05 series. 05 5-0 is purely an error of memory. when the prediciton was repeated prior to the current series it was in fact being stated for the first time, the originary moment. 05 5-0 was one of those replays where for a moment you think you’re watching the live action and your heart feeling that a wkt has fallen enters your mouth for a moment .

takeshi kitano once made a film about baseball called boiling point (in english language world release anyway – in japanese release its called 3-4x 10 gatsu, which is something like the 3rd and 4th of october). discontinuity of time and narrative in this film is audaciously played out. film critic casio abe in his book takeshi kitano v beat takeshi discusses the films construction in terms of a theory of baseball. a distribution of characters and situations. at a very simple level a theory of cricket would seem to posit similar ideas. cricket is of course far more complex than baseball. kitano’s film i think is far more complex than baseball and in fact it is likely he uses baseball only as a culturally recognisable tool. if he had suggested a film about cricket it would have been far too obscure for any japanese production house. through this work kitano makes baseball into cricket.

pietersens range continues to expand wildly – rain god, new planet, anime fighter pilot… degas subject – the way he trips down the wkt and pirouettes v mcgrath.