The more astute of you (!) will note the title of this blog. It relates, of course, to a calamitous defeat in Adelaide in 2006, where England were so comfortable in the match until it all unravelled on the fateful 5th morning. England lost that test match because they lost their nerve and failed miserably trying not to lose. We deserved to lose the game because we were so negative and Australia so aggressive. The game seems to reward positivity.

Full credit to all I heard from Ricky Ponting today who toed a party line that the game was decided on the first day when England got away from them, and on the second when the Aussies batting let them down. He didn’t get on the case of the umpires because to do so would be sour grapes. There wasn’t any doubt this morning when England took five wickets, four of them rattling the timbers.

But cast your mind back to day 5 of the Adelaide test, and one particular incident at the start of the day cost us dearly…

(Look closely and you’ll see Dmitri Old at the start of the clip as the players run out – I’m the lump with the camera)

Look at the incident at 0:47 in this clip. Strauss missed the ball by miles but was given out by Stevie B.Cricnfo,as always, is a good source of info.. here is their take on the dismissal..

29.6 gone! Oh dear. Don’t think Strauss is too happy with that. He came skipping down the pitch, trying to work it to leg, the ball hit the pad and ballooned to short-leg who appealed…as did every Australian and Bucknor raises his finger. Replays confirm the ball missed the bat by, well…several inches.

Shane Warne appealed like no-one’s business, honourable Gilly was up, as was whoever it was who caught him at short leg – oh yes, the honourable Mr Cricket so revered by Greg Baum in his article in the discussion below for being a paragon of virtue. So my comment to any whingeing bloody Aussie. STFU. If England had moaned at the shocking decisions, we’d have been labelled as whingeing Poms, bitter, and too negative. We deserve what we got. As an esteemed colleague of mine said so well about Australians, and their media “they can throw, but they can’t catch.”

I’d also note that the clip shows a lovely montage of aggressive appealing, and also of duff Koertzen decisions. So again, this time Chloe Saltau, I’d remind you that what comes around goes around. Who is Chloe Saltau – read this. She’s bitter. She is so obsessed, she wrote about it twice.

To the cricket itself, it was a great win, and fantastic to see Freddie take his third five wicket haul with a fabulous spell. Swann also got the big wicket of Clarke, and England won with a little more comfort than I thought. I was prepared for some squeaky bum time, as I’m accustomed to with England. But it is just 1-0 and England must not get carried away. There is still a lot of work to do and Australia won’t bat that badly again, and we won’t probably bowl that well!

For ten days, enjoy the whingeing and the moaning and the amnesia and the hubris and the bleating and the pain. Australia are masters at the crying game, they just don’t know it.

As a little footnote, as I drove home tonight, Radio 5 Live had Agnew and Fraser on to discuss the game. At one point, when asking about Ponting’s captaincy, Jeremiah Agnew said “I haven’t really noticed a problem with Ponting’s captaincy – I’ve had more of an issue with Andrew Strauss’s. Indeed, I want to talk to him about it.”

You wonder why this country doesn’t produce winners when you’ve got no-marks like that thinking they are experts! Blimey. We won, Jonathan. They lost. Give Strauss some credit, eh?