Thank goodness for Peter Siddle

Well, gee wizz if Stanford's Lap's very own Peter Siddle hasn't proved why we were pushing his case for Test selection so heavily. It was always obvious to this humble correspondent that Siddle should play instead of Doug the Rug (even if Doug is from NSW) and we are just glad he proved us right. Well done Peter on the hat trick, we always knew you had it in you. What a champion.

No blog posting until the end of the second day for reasons which will become clear but all in all it was a day of intense learning. For instance, I learnt that a truly remarkable number of plays on the name "Peter Siddle" are possible. We have had

Hat trick hero (solid and straight to the point)

Peter Siddle you bloody beauty (earthy but possibly a bit long)

Birthday boy (factually correct but maybe a bit obvious)

Super Siddle (starting to get there)

Sizzling Siddle (now we are onto something)

Siddle sizzles (probably a copy of the previous one)

Peter Skittle (we are humming with tabloid satisfaction now)

and by far the silliest, smartest, best and worst of them all

Peter Siddle, Pom disposal expert

Tabloid journalism: you just never know whether to laugh or cry.

I also learnt that Peter's mother often spends the entire day in her pyjamas. She sounds like my kind of girl ! Hang on, her son is also a wood chopping champion (well, Victoria’s West Gippsland junior champion). Never a good idea to make smutty comments about mothers of men with axes so lets just forget all about it.

Peter Siddle was that shocked to learn that his tattooist didn't actually know how many wickets there were in a hat trick after all

If I didn't already know it, I also learnt that if you go to a very large pub straight after work with a large group of current and ex-colleagues and watch cricket on a large screen, have a large amount of hot chips, nothing else, and combine that with a, some would say, almost irresponsibly large amount of beer and stay there for a large amount of time then the next day you feel largely poor for an inordinately large amount of the day. It was a large amount of fun though.

I only stayed for one, but felt remarkably average throughout most of the next day

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Well the second day was just as tense and see sawing as the first. Some good batting from Katich and Watson and what looks to be shaping up as a real classic from Hussey. He has probably lifted the pressure on himself for the rest of the series with this knock. It wasn't so much how many he got but the fact that he looked so confident and aggressive. It was the Hussey of old.

What wasn't so good was our middle order; again. Ponting was out cheaply but at least not to a pull shot. Clarke mad only 9 or so and generally scratched around like a chicken who knows his feet about about to be lopped off and marinated (a small tip of the hat to my childhood neighbours, the Ahyongs and a big thanks for all the marinated chicken's feet in my formative years).

Unfortunately, Marcus North did nothing to prove to me that he shouldn't be immediately replaced by a bloke that I am certain will be a long term star, Usman Khawaja. Honestly, if you are a Test cricketer and you appear to simply have no idea why you keep getting loads of low scores, I think the battle is already lost.

"There have been a lot of times when I have been getting out really quickly" North said.

"All batters have worked out that the first 30 or 40 balls in an innings are the most important. I am starting to work some good theories out"

Oh well, bloody brilliant fella. Tops that you are finally, 19 Tests down and in the middle of an Ashes series, starting to conjure up one or two vague bloody thoughts on the matter but not good enough I am afraid. I said that Uzzi would be playing in the 4th Test of the series. I am now moving my prediction up to Test number 3.

Bowling wise, England were a bit like our batting: inconsistent. Some really good stuff with lots of quite average stuff. Swann in particular was fairly innocuous today.

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Finally, there was a great deal of talk over the past couple of days about the Parkinson like interview show that Shane Warne debuted this week. Whilst, he appears to have somewhat charmed the critics, at least the ones trying to cuddle up with his PR company, the feedback from actually viewers was a little more mixed.

"embarrassing"

were the thoughts of one intelligent, bearded gentleman that spoke to me about it.

"unwatchable"

opined another.

Whilst it does sound bad, I am secure in the knowledge that it can't have been the worst ex-cricketer hosted TV show of all time. That record goes to Matthew Hayden for the "Matthew Hayden's Home Ground" bile that the Lifestyle channel vomited up a few months ago. Unlike Matthew's 380, this is a record that will never be beaten. It was truly woeful.

At least both Shane's interview setting and style seemed to put his guests at ease

In late breaking news, the full front page of our local paper (not a Sydney paper but a free one just for a couple of suburbs around here) is today taken up with the engrossing story "Dog pinched kebab". Not really cricket related but interesting none the less. Apparently the dog was caught. No word on the kebab.