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Lord's Day One: The stumps are that-a-way, Mitch

Submitted by rickeyre on July 17, 2009 - 6:53pm

Is The World's Second-Best Test All-Rounder (And Third Best Bowler) all washed up? Is his mum a mole (spelling correct) for the England and Wales Cricket Board? Is his karate-ka WAG up for the chop? How else can we explain the worst Australian performance at the Home of Archery since the days of Great Hedley Verity Sticky? Or are Ricky Ponting's captaincy skills to blame for everything?

On the other hand, why are we calling 364 runs in a full day's play of a Test match an underachievement? Because, the way the Australians were playing, England looked for much of the day like topping 400 well before stumps. Tweet of the day from YorkshireLen sums it up:

"I see England's middle order arrived at the ground in a clown car again"

Still, considering the state of play at the end of day one at Cardiff, Australia is not out of this match. Watch the weather, and watch the pitch as prepared by Ian Chappell's favourite namedrop, Mike Hunt.

At the scene of the original Billy Midwinter poaching outrage of 1878, our Midwinter-Midwinter votes for Thursday: Andrew Strauss 3 pts, Alistair Cook 2 pts, Ben Hilfenhaus 1 pt.

Today's selection of reportage: Peter English the, er, Australian correspondent for Cricinfo; Jim Maxwell (ABC Radio); John Etheridge (The Sun, who also have a slideshow of Nathan Hauritz' dislocated finger); and the aforementioned YorkshireLen from his own blog.

Finally, here is Stephen Fry's speech at Lord's on Tuesday night. It's more than 140 characters long.