Pride before a fall

Perth Day 2: Australia 268 & 119 for 3, England 187 all out omigod, Australia lead by 200 runs wheredidthatcomefrom

Somewhat delayed blog today as sorrows were abundant and needed to be drowned. And they were.

Well, they say pride comes before a fall and we were jolly proud to be 78 for no wicket less than an hour after the start of today's play in Perth. Strauss and Cook were batting like a million Aussie dollars (which these days will buy you at least an evening of drinks for a few mates, maybe even a curry). It looked like they would never get out. It looked like we were going to win the Ashes before Christmas. Which has never ever happened in the history of the world.

Will Bill play? Yes, right in front of me

We even stood up to applaud England's 1,200th run for the last 6 wickets which had fallen to Australian bowlers since the first day of the series. This was surely the new reality. The new order. Perhaps the start of a decade of English domination over the old enemy.

Then suddenly it all went completely pear-shaped. 78-0 to 98-5 in a horrific half hour for England, then a painful, somehow inevitable descent to 187 all out. The destroyer - Mitchell Johnson, a man who was so embarrassingly bad at  Brisbane that England fans rejoiced at his recall for this match. Here in Perth he has so far hit 62 (still the highest score by any batsman) and taken 6 for 38. If his batting yesterday was astonishingly good, then his bowling today was simply outstanding. By common consensus within the Barmy Army, it was a privilege to witness bowling of such sustained pace and accuracy - even if it was unleashed against our own side. One of the truly great spells of fast bowling you could ever hope to see.

So I will lament no more the predictable nature of this series. Today cricket became gloriously unpredictable again - even if it was at England's expense.

Going into Day 3, Australia resume effectively on 200 for 3 wickets - not a bad position having been 69 for 5 shortly after lunch on Day 1. My prediction for Day 3, hopefully not quite such a lazy one, is that Australia will lose wickets regularly to a wounded, fighting English team but still set England a fourth innings target of around 380-400.

To be honest, after being so comprehensively outplayed on Day 2, it will now be really tough for England to avoid defeat here - but that's what we thought in Brisbane. What is clear is that someone on the English side will have to match Johnson's feats with ball and bat - so far this has not been in evidence, but there's still a lot of cricket left in this game.