One Nil To The Ingerlund

Well shivver me timbers (a bit like Tortty's timbers got shivvered yesterday). Three tests down and we're still one up against the former best team in the world until they forgot to play test cricket for nine months.

Yesterday was a real labour of love for watching English cricket fans. You really had to feel Test Cricket in your bones to stick with it. We scored 163 runs in a day. Dick Ewen will tell you that's a scoring rate of 1.81 recurring runs per over. Boundaries were fewer and further between than Adam Crane forward defensives.

What is happening to Test Cricket? The pitches are becoming so "good" that England have held on for three last wicket draws in 12 months and have been on the other end of one in the West Indies and a couple of other right to the wire results. Pitches are so "good" in India that it is no surprise whatsoever that Tendulkar, Dravid and VVS can't face retiring and Viru has had to start slogging in Tests to stop himself going to sleep and breaking Lara's records.

Back to yesterday. Colly's backlift was so negligable that the ball seemed to melt into the sweet spot before it dribbled down by his feet time and again. Belly played shot after languid shot with a final flourish of his thick ginger wrists. Nothing happened for hours and hours and hours.

And then we were whisked into another of those climactic moments of the last post. Wickets fell like pensioners on icy pavements and it took the steely nerve of Bunny Onions to see England to the close again.

Not before JP Dumminy had done a Broady and trod on the ball at long off before grinningly handing it back to Steyn who had a good look to see if anything unusual might have happened to it. FACT. You look. Don't tell me JP was trying to stop the ball going for four either because he was hoping to expose whoever was up the other end. He only stood on it when it had hit the rope.

Which brings Wickman back to South African whingeing and verbal jousting in this series. Arthur and Smith are turning into the dullest double act since Samuel Beckett wrote the first act of Waiting for Godot. Every Test starts with Smith bleating on about something or other. Strauss' captaincy, Trott's routines, the pressure facing Cooky and Bellend and the cheating accusations of this Test. Chaps. Wickman knows you want to be as tough as the Waugh era Aussies but you just aren't. And in the meantime it's farcical you moaning every week about some new perceived injustice. You're beginning to sound like Ricky Ponting every time he comes to England.

[Smith and Arthur comtemplate their future if England win the series - Ed]