Enjoy it now... Ashes Day 9

With up one day remaining in the Adelaide Test, England look firm favourites to win it and go one up in the series, weather permitting.

Jubilant Barmy Army members in Australia and bleary eyed UK resident cricket fans will be willing them on when play begins early again after rain washed out part of today’s session.

In the meantime what should we be making of what’s going on down under? Two and three days into the series it looked like England were about to go down in flames again having contributed a limp batting performance and some less than incisive bowling to what was shaping up for an ominous Aussie win.

Since then Australia haven’t had a sniff. The public are staying away from Adelaide in their thousands largely leaving the BA to boss things in the supporting stakes. Last night in the first session when Australia batted every time Watson or Katich hit a boundary there was a very audible single scream of Australian joy from a person in the crowd. It was disturbing in tone – a sort of mini-orgasm – and in the fact that you could hear it at all in a venue where 20 odd thousand Aussies would usually be baying for blood.

That this Test started on a Friday partly explains the reason why there were so few Aussie fans there to see the day’s play. But mostly it’s because there’s a pall hanging over Australian cricket right now. If it wasn’t for Mr Cricket’s phoenix-like rise and Watson and Haddin’s sheer grit and in-your-face brashness you’d think we were playing an England side presided over by Ted Dexter.

That Ponting persevered with Doherty in this test undid all the good work the selectors undertook in jettisoning Hilfenhaus and Johnson. Harris is a good replacement with a bit of grunt but surely the England lads must be pissing themselves every time Doherty gets the ball. He looks like the duelling banjoist from Deliverance and the parallels between the central act of that movie and what KP has being doing to him recently are a painful reminder of when entertainment becomes too difficult to watch.

The Australian press have absolutely hammered their side for the last ten days. Some tabloids have taken to issuing guidelines as to how to do a rain dance. Others are trotting out (see what Wickman did there) the old canard about South Africans playing for England in desperation. Do they remember Kepler Wessels at all? The selectors and Ponting are said to be at loggerheads with Andrew Hilditch the one getting most of the abuse. Until Michael Clarke got runs last night the knives were out for him. Marcus North needs a bit innings it would seem. Nathan Hauritz’s standing as Australia’s best spinner increases every time Doherty sways past the wicket on his way to deliver another pie.

Wickman’s advice is simple. Sit back and enjoy it. Whatever happens tomorrow we're in the driving seat and it doesn't happen very often. And if you aren’t getting much in the way of banter from Australian chums who have gone worryingly silent get on to cricinfo. Right now its open season on the Ashes from our sub-continental chums who are up in arms about whether a series between the third and fifth ranked test nations is worth the candle… Wickman says it is. It’s been a long time since England played so positively and with such enjoyment. And a long time since Australia have had to overcome their own limitations, a panicking media and a home crowd as hostile as a Headingly Saturday. It might not happen again…