"Steve Harmison is the Forest Gump of World Sport: you never know what you are going to get"
Rodney Hogg, Lords, 16 July 2009
The first day of the second Test started well for both sides.
Firstly, England obviously read Stanford's Lap during the past few days and took our advice to avoid panic at all costs. They stuck to their guns and sent Steve Harmison back to Ashington where he is currently reading back issues of the Blyth Spartans Fanzine (many of which contain excellent articles from Dave). Good for you England, look to the future.
Secondly, ex Australian player Rodney Hogg managed to call Steve Harmison the "Forest Gump of World Sport" due to the fact that "you never know what you are going to get" during the SBS Australia commentary. I am not exactly sure what Rodders meant by this but it was difficult not to be impressed with his inventiveness. I have a feeling he got his line a little mixed up and meant to say something like "Steve Harmison is like a box of Chocolates: you never know what you are going to get", a play on the famous line from the film "Forest Gump".
Maybe.
I prefer to think that Rodney was in fact calling Steve a surprisingly athletic, half witted Vietnam veteran, who had a great ability to ignore his Mother's very sad case of hopeless sex addition, whilst he ran a successful prawning operation and fell in love with an Aids ridden ex-intravenous drug user that he once went to school with. A most curious way to describe a man with 221 Test Wickets
Steve Harmison's run up was always inexplicably long
Once play got under way, it was another very meek start from Australia. Again we were too loose and again we looked without energy in the field. However, unlike Cardiff, England's openers didn't get themselves out and instead capitalised; big time.
In the short space of a little over 5 days of Test cricket, Mitchell Johnson has regressed at least two years. He has again become the round arm slinger whose waywardness annoyed me so much when he started in the Australian team. He bowled absolute and total tripe in the first session, full of half trackers outside off stump. England profited, swiftly moving to 0/126 at lunch. Great news for England, we have managed to bowl Cook back into form. Strauss also looked very solid.
Siddle was reasonable and Hilfenhaus (The New Terry Alderman remember) again did well but any session where Nathan Hauritz looks to be the standout bowler (as he did in the morning stanza) cannot be a good one for Australia.
In the field, the keeping of Haddin was the worst I have seen for years in a Test match. As per script, when the batsman left the ball and it went straight to him, his technique was so good it looked like Ian Healy if you squinted hard enough. But when the ball swung or moved in any way, his feet let him down time and time again. Something has to be done about this, it will start costing us dearly. It is ugly and amateurish and not up to Test standard.
I blame the WAGs. The bloody WAGs, Allan Border didn't even let wives and children see their husbands and fathers until the Ashes were won in 1989, famously saying
"When you think about it, the only reason you are in England is because your husband is playing cricket for Australia. That has to come first"
In 1989, Australia didn't have any mornings as poor as the one today. I will leave it to you to ponder just why that might have been.
Of course, I hold 20 20 personally responsible for the introduction of WAGs to Test cricket.
UPDATE: In the process of writing this, England moving to 0/196 before Cook fell just 5 short of his hundred ... LBW Mitchell Johnson, who is an excellent leader of the Australian attack. Hauritz, the last spinner in Australia, has also left the field with a suspected broken finger. Gee wizz, this could become carnage
Despite adopting the motivational tactics favoured by Otto in A Fish Called Wanda, Mitchell Johnson bowled terribly on the first morning of the second Test at Lords
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