Incoming from Michael J:

Amongst other things, 482 was the most runs Australia have scored in a day in a test match since 1910, Michael Clarke scored 120 runs in the final session, Australia scored 202 runs in the final session, and Michael Clarke became the first player to score four double centuries in a calendar year. (He still has another two and a half tests to play). After all that, David Warner’s 119 off 112 balls earlier in the day almost looks an insignificant footnote.

And what’s more, 482-5 after 55-3.

Gory details here and here.

I went to bed when Warner got out (210-4), figuring that at that point the big hitting had ended.  Wrong.

Makes a change from this, doesn’t it?

This year, I really (although I promise nothing) want to do one of those “my year in photographs” postings, for Samizdata.  The trick with such postings is to start assembling photos early, i.e. around now.

Trawling through the year’s archives today, with the above in mind, I found this fun photo, taken in the part of London where people grumble about how the Olympics haven’t helped them as much as they were promised.

Yes, it’s a pub dwarfed by modernity:

I wondered where exactly this is, and then I saw that three doors away from the Builders Arms is the West Ham Labour Party.  So: West Ham.  Although googling says it could be Newham, or Stratford.  Eastenders land anyway.

The pub itself is not as unmodern as it is trying to look, being built in that Ye Olde Interwar Style with bogus half timbering.  As one raised in the suburbs of London, I know the style well.  An earlier version of the Builders Arms was demolished to make way for road widening, and that one is its replacement, built in 1937.  That being the time when a lot of London’s suburbs got built, with lots of buildings looking just like that.

Osbert Lancaster’s phrase “Stockbroker’s Tudor” has just popped into my mind.  While googling for images along those lines, I came across this, about the “Interwar Old English” style, as practised in Australia.

As so often with architecture, form follows fashion.

Having looked for longish periods like they might make quite a few more against Sri Lanka than England did, their last 5.0 overs turned into these 3.5 overs:

W . 1 1 4 . | 1 . 1 1wd . . W | 1 1 . W 1 . | 1 . W . W

Five wickets for thirteen runs in other words.  All out 217.  Very demoralising.  NZ have to get early wickets, and expose Sri Lanka’s unpractised (because so far in the tournament not needed) middle and late order.

Thought.  If Sri Lanka walk this like they walked it against England, this will make England’s demolition look less bad, which might just prolong a few England careers.  But can NZ do this?  Cricinfo:

Difficult to imagine them spooking Sri Lanka like they did South Africa.

And like England did too.

Well, NZ have made a start with the wickets.  SL got off to their usual rapid start but Tharanga is now gone, brilliantly caught by Ryder.  So my original title - “NZ not doing any better than England so far” - has had to be changed.  How many more can they now knock over?  (How bad can they make England look by comparison?)

I’m following it here.

It’s now rare for me to find a picture of a stylish new bridge that I haven’t ever seen before.  Here is one:

That’s the nicest snap I’ve been able to find of the Seafarers Bridge in Melbourne.  Other good pix of it here together with explanatory verbiage.

Here at BM.com, we now particularly like Melbourne.

Time for another string of weird symbols that mean everything to cricketophiles, and bugger all to anyone else:

1 W 1 . 2 1|W 1 . W

This Cricket World Cup would be a very poor sort of thing without England playing in it.  I take a patriotic pride from the fact that England’s first four games have been just about the best four games of the tournament so far.

The non-English contribution to the tournament reached its nadir yesterday, when Sri Lanka and Australia, having contrived a very promising start, then had to watch this happen:

This fiasco having been preceded by the usual crop of proper-team-minnow annihilations.  Like I say, thank goodness for England.

It all comes from England’s splendid habit, from the point of view of the tournament as a whole, of playing good against good sides, but bad against bad sides.  Evens things out perfectly.  Having damn near lost to the Netherlands and having actually lost to Ireland, and having damn near won against India, today they actually won against South Africa.  South Africa are, or were, many people’s (including my) top pick to win this thing.  The hyroglifics above are the concluding spasms of the England South Africa game that just ended.  Broad: 6.4-0-15-4.  Work that out, American women!

To me, there is something deeply admirable about a team which gives weak opponents a chance, but does everything it can to beat stronger ones.  This is the definition of being sporting, is it not?  After all, the game’s the thing.

Also, this good against good but bad against bad thing, if you think about it, augurs very well for England in the rest of the tournament.  As the bad teams go, England will face only good teams, and will just play better and better!

The extreme opposite of England have been New Zealand.  New Zealand have been crushing teams worse than them, like they’re going to win the whole thing.  But when they have come up against a proper team, they have turned into total crushees.  They are bullies, in other words.

TUESDAY: Better.  The New Zealanders have finally picked on someone their own size to beat up.  They batted first today against Pakistan, and the last six overs of their innings went for: 14, 8, 28, 15, 30, 19.  Total 302.  That’s within range for the Pakistanis, and it could be a great game.

By lunch on the first day of the fourth test at the MCG, Australia had already lost vital wickets, and also those of Hughes and Ponting.

I slept through the beginning and only awoke and searched out R5LiveSportX (my subconscious wanted to know what the score was) as they were discussing the wicket of Hughes, and right after that Ponting got out.  Big news: Watson was already out.  And then, just before lunch and just before a shower began, Hussey was out caught behind off Jimmy A.

After England went one up at Adelaide and before the previous test at Perth that Australia won by an innings, I was a lone voice of sanity telling England fans to calm down and stop assuming that Australia was now a failed state.  Now everyone will be wallowing hysterically in sanity, pointing out that Australia were four down by lunch on the first day at Perth and still won that one by several thousand runs.  Now, everyone will be saying that England should not be counting their chickens and that four swallows do not make a test match morning.

Yes they do.  Let me go out on a limb here and say that England have made a very good start.

LATER:

. . . W . . | . . . . W . | . W

Australia 77-8.  I told you it was a good start by England.

LATER: Australia 98 all out.

LATER: I just want to have this here as a souvenir:

It’s a slice from one of the set of photos at the bottom of this page.

The point being that good moments for your team in this series have a habit of being extreme, but fleeting.  I don’t believe this has stopped.  Ponting double century in the second innings anyone?

… of Watermelons and wankers.

The third test in Perth got under way in the small hours of this morning without anyone getting out in the first over.  Since Anderson of England bowled that over, a maiden, that was a definite setback for England.  The last ball of this first over did see Watson being given out caught behind off his hip, but he knew he wasn’t out and the review system saved him.

But a wicket did fall in the second over.  Hughes bowled Tremlett 2.  So, some compensation for that early disappointment for us England supporters.

Tremlett, flagged up in my previous Ashes posting here, has already taken more wickets (1) in this match than the entire total of the wickets he took (0) in the earlier warm-up game against Victoria.

Now Ponting is out, caught Collingwood bowled Anderson 12.  17-2.

A lot can happen during a five day test match, but, on balance, I would say that England are just about shading it, so far.