Australians will tell you that Melbourne's climate can give you four seasons in one day, but even the most imaginative weather forecaster could not have predicted temperatures below freezing in parts of Victoria yesterday. Bizarre newspaper front pages showing Christmas day snowball fights in the hill regions reminded homesick England fans what might have been, if only they had not decided to spend their hard earned wages watching their nation's cricket team get a good humping down under this winter.
Thus with temperatures hovering around 12 degrees centigrade, cloudy skies and a damp pitch, a crucial toss loomed in conditions ideal for bowling. Spontaneous cheering erupted from the thousands of England fans when Mark Nicholas announced that Andrew Flintoff had won the toss. 'Yes' we thought. 'We'll have a bat I think Mark' said big Fred. 'No Fred, change your mind' came the cry.
Too late. The rest was sadly predictable. With the ball zipping around off the spicy Melbourne pitch, England did well to get to 101 for 2 with Strauss and Collingwood playing well against some impressive Australian seam bowling. However, Australia have one cricketer who has influenced the outcome of more Ashes battles than anyone in living memory, and standing on a total of 699 test wickets, it was time for Shane Keith Warne to enter the fray.
Warne refers to Andrew Strauss as 'Daryl', after Daryl Cullinan, the South African batsman who simply could not play the master leg spinner. Strauss had played well to reach 50 in difficult circumstances but could only stand in amazement as the beautifully flighted, dipping spinner beat his intended clip to leg and spun into his middle stump, and he has now been dismissed 8 times in tests by the blonde wizard. 700 test wickets is a quite astonishing tally and when he does retire, Australia will feel Warne's loss very deeply. The whole of the MCG, numbering nearly 90,000 spectators, stood to applaud this once in a lifetime cricketer.
England lost their last 8 wickets for 58 runs in depressingly familiar pattern to finish their 1st innings 159 all out. Two late strikes by a rejuvenated Flintoff at least got England back into the game but the real talking point amongst England fans was Rudi Koertzen's failure to give Matthew Hayden out to Matthew Hoggard when to all eyes he looked stone dead LBW not once but twice. If he goes on to get a big score tomorrow, there will be some unpleasant comments directed his way.
Wello
