3 wickets down now, and the best part of two sessions to play. The Poms have a sniff, but the game swings more and more towards a draw. (that's no result for you cricket novices). Peter Roebuck, former county captain, writes in a weekend 'paper here in Melbourne, that he thinks the Aussies are playing "like the England of old, and the English are playing like Australians!" I'm gratified to hear that the game itself is thriving in the old dart. Kids playing cricket in their own time is where it all starts of course, in the backyard, in parks, whereever. It's always been the case in Oz...
For your collective(I hope)amusement,herewith,

A CHILD'S CHRISTMAS IN WARRNAMBOOL by Dylan Thompson

   One christmas was so like another in those years around
   the sea-town corner now, that I can never remember
   whether it was 106 degrees in 1953 or whether it was 103
   degrees in 1956. All the Christmases roll into one, down
   the wave-roaring salt-squinting years of yesterboy.
   My hand goes into the fridge of imperishable memory, and out come:
   salads and sunburn lotions, the brief exuberant hiss
   of beer being opened and the laugh of wet-haired youths
   around a Zephyr 6, the smell of insect repellant and eucalyptus
   and the distant, constant, slowly listless bang
   of the flywire door. And resting on a formica altar, waiting for
   'ron, the biggest Pav in the world; a magic Pav,
   a cut-and-come-again Pav for all the children in all the towns
   across the wide brown bee-humming trout-fit sheep-rich
   two-horse country.
   And the Aunts. Always the Aunties. In the kitchen on the
   black-and-white photographed beach of the past,
   playing out the rope to a shared childhood,
   caught in the undertow and drifting.
   And some numerous Uncles, wondering why they weren't
   each other, coming around the letterbox to an attacking field
   in the Boxing day test, and being driven handsomely
   by some middle-order nephew, skipping down the
   vowel-flattening pitch and putting the ball into the
   tent-flap on the first bounce of puberty.

And I look up to see the fourth wicket fall...we have all been here before! tantalising!!! long live cricket! It's reassuring to know that our societies/cultures have such pursuits, such fun for goodness' sake! Now for it! Incidentally, dropped catches may tell a tale of woe by stumps. THAT'S my prediction!!

cheers dBranno