Arshes!

I am often ridiculed by friends and colleagues for my unflinching optimism, even when all the evidence suggests otherwise, I like to look on the bright side. After 40 years of disappointment and failure I still believe that England might win the football World Cup. Kate Moss is still unmarried, I am still unmarried. Stop laughing now, you never know, oh all right, maybe you do. Dapper Max will perhaps, sometime in the future, learn the recipe for proper cheese on toast and make up for his errors on quarter final day 2003. And Steve may one day get a round in, ha ha.


But perhaps the next two paragraphs will stretch the limits of feasibility even more than the examples given above. Here we go. Deep breath. England can still win the first Ashes test in Cardiff. There i've said it. I know that it is a long shot, Ponting and Katich looked as vulnerable as a titanium Rhinocerous yesterday, giving only a single half chance between them in about 4 hours of cricket. England's bowling, one or two brief spells aside, looked lacklustre, devoid of ideas and lacking in self belief. But, and this is a big but, today is another day.


Yesterday is gone, today, Katich and the rodent-like Ponting are new batsmen, fresh in. The bowlers have had a night to sleep on the failures of Thursday, to analyse where they went wrong. Pick up a couple early doors today and who knows what could happen. We were told this pitch would spin, that is why Swann and Monty are in the team, and it might still do. If England can get the Aussies out without them getting a lead then this effectively becomes a two-day game. A two game in which Australia have to bat on a fifth day pitch and England have two spinners that can, just maybe, win the game. Expect England to recover some bowling pride today and skittle the Aussies sometime between lunch and tea with the scores about level. At close the hosts will be 120 for 2.