Be Excellent To Each Other

Blimey, it's going better than I expected:

174/2 - Strauss on 99 (Cook went for 52 and Bell for 17).

Yep. Cook in and out again, but I really hope Straussy makes his ton.

ton done, KP shouldn't have bothered

Featherbed pitch, apparently. We'll labour to 350-400 before India cruise to 650-4d.

Starting to unravel 204/4 - Collingwood extremely unlucky to go apparently.

Another to put on the list of reasons why I hate Billy Bowden.

I want to be watching cricket now, not sitting at work, damn the absence of any terrestrial highlights for overseas tours.

Not bad, but a bit disappointing. Colly got a terrible decision, but he was batting like me anyway.

He wasn't doing THAT bad. In fact I thought he looked as if he was finally getting to grips with the pitch, before getting a joke of a decision. That's twice Bowden has done that to him recently.

Anyway, Freddie to score a quadruple century tomorrow. You heard it here first.

Featherbeds ey.

Criminy - 102/5 in reply after two c&b's in two overs - one to Panesar!

Good start in tests for Swann as well, I was never quite sure what he'd done to so upset Duncan Fletcher anyway.

Panesar... catch.... nah!

I'm very surprised - perhaps I didn't give our batsmen enough credit. Has the pitch changed at all, do you think?

Not a clue - following it on Cricinfo. Couple of the Indian wickets sound like tame dismissals though so could be a bit of both pitch and players.

Also magic changes from Captain KP - Swann, Flintoff and Harmison have all taken wickets in the first over of a spell.

141/6!

Swann's wickets were interesting. The batsmen just didn't seem to get to grips with him. All his subsequent overs were 'meh' though.

Flintoff was consistently excellent. He had Yuvraj all over the place and deserves a lot of the credit for Harmison's wicket.

I'm struggling to remember the last time that wasn't the case with his bowling, he really is an astonishing cricketer with the ball in hand.

And to think he still insists he's a batsman who bowls.

If India can pick up where they left off today they will cruise it, which will be a huge fourth innings chase.

Sehwag's innings was really exceptional in the circumstances, and there is some real quality to come. In some ways maybe the expectation will now be on India rather than England to win. Interestingly poised for day 5.

If India win it will be considered quite rightly one of the greatest final innings in Test cricket, ever. And, of course, the opposite for the fielding side.

Well that was one of the greatest final innings in Test cricket, ever. The fielding side, however...

That's the most disappointed I've been in England since Adelaide.

Bigger and bigger question marks over Panesar now as well, the "rounded" cricketer arguments get overdone, but he offers nothing but bowling to the team and that hasn't been impressive for a while.

He needs more variation in pace and an arm ball. In Test cricket being an all-rounder isn't as important as in the ODIs. I say drop Monty and put Swann in as the first choice spinner for a while.

I agreed with the commentators saying that KP's field settings were very odd. He just let them knock singles and get comfortable very easily. We should have tried to pressure them a lot more than we did, and not set fields for bad bowling.

You too can knock seven bells out of England's woeful bowlers.

That is even shitter than England were.
By quite some way.

You're brainwrong. It is both hilarious and fun (when bored at work).

It, like many flash games, suffers from horrendous controller lag.

It does sometimes, but I just close the window and reopen it and then it's quick as a (You're not doing that - Humanity Ed)