The morning after

Wow, what an awesome test match! England really showed the Australians how to do it. Finally a win at Lord's after 75 years of winless cricket.

Leaving Australia to make 521 in the last two days, which in today's test cricket isn't a tough ask, they bowled them out for a measly 406. *cough* wankers *cough*

Having set an enormous (by England standards) first innings total of 425, the Poms procede to bowl Ponting and his "men" out for a ridiculously low (by Aussie standards) 215. The biggest question left for everyone to think about was whether Strauss would make them bat again, or if he'd play defensively and try and set a bigger total and hopefully intimidate the pants off them. I'm not sure if they know this, but Warne doesn't play anymore and Hauritz is, well, not Warne, so there is no need to panic if you need to make more than 20 for a fourth innings chase.

Hauritz hasn't impressed me too much yet, so I find it odd that everyone is handing over their wickets to him so often, unless it's a ploy to lure him into a false sense of security and then when it really matters, he'll get some Harrisment.

After fannying around for the first few overs, the Aussies managed to limp their way to 128/5, but after receiving some Gummy Berry juice, they clawed their way back into the match and ended the day on 313/5 after Haddin and Clarke put together the crumbling innings with sticky tape and Prestik.

All was well up until the second over of day five when Fabulously Fit Freddie came blasting in and out of shear terror, Haddin offered up his wicket. Soon after that (43 runs later), Clarke followed and from there is was like picking the bits of meat of your KFC bones.

On day five, Swann and Flintoff bowled better than the Aussies could play and that sealed the first win for them against Australia in ages. In the end, Flintoff's retirement proved to be more of a distraction to the Aussies than to the Poms.

Flintoff grabbed his first 5 wicket haul in four years and only the third one of his Test career. In First Class he only has four of them. I feel he should definitely have had better figures than what he actually has.

Compared to Harmlesson and Monty Penisar:

Harmlesson :
FC - 26 in 182 matches
Tests - 8 in 61 matches

Penisar :
FC - 19 in 102 matches
Tests - 8 in 39 matches

Flintoff :
FC - 4 in 181 matches
Test - 3 in 77 matches

That's some pretty ordinary stats for a good bowler.

Anyways, he's still got another three Tests to play and maybe he'll even be fit enough to play all three. Let us hope that he can find that little extra in the rest of the games that he found at Lord's to get some more 5 wicket hauls.

England 1-0 Australia

The series is far from over and not even halfway yet, so don't expect Australia to lie down and die just yet. In Test cricket it's only over when it's over. I know one thing though, I predicted 2-1 to the Poms, so in the next three games we'll have a disappointment somewhere and I won't be surprised if it happens in Birmingham.

Oh, by the way, well done to Strauss and his ladies on a brilliant win.