It’s a little harsh on the four Aussie batsmen who tonned up in their only innings of the tour, but for my money, the most impressive player so far has been Ben Hilfenhaus. The last name on the teamsheet for Australia at Cardiff, and the most controversial selection to date, he’s also been the best player on either team.

Two bits of bowling stand out for me yesterday. The first was Hilfenhaus’s setting up of Ravi Bopara with five inswingers followed by a straight ball that did nothing for a straightforward lbw. To have the accuracy to do this- bearing in mind that his pace is generally around 87-92mph- is a massive achievement in itself. Of everyone who has bowled so far this series, only Hilfenhaus has been bowling well enough to execute the plan to perfection. Not only that, but having also caught out Kevin Pietersen with the non-swinger last Sunday, he’s starting to put serious doubts in the minds of players over what they have to play at. There’s no question in my mind that his setting up of Ravi Bopara contributed to the dismissal of Andrew Flintoff later that day.

The other piece of bowling that impressed me was the solitary bouncer he bowled in the entire day, to Kevin Pietersen. When Mitchell Johnson and Peter Siddle were being pulled off a length by Alastair Cook, Hilfenhaus continued to pitch it up and keep the batsmen under pressure. Then, when he saw Pietersen look uncomfortable, he threw in the short delivery which was top-edged inches short of keeper Haddin.

England should know plenty about the overuse of the short delivery. It scuffs up the ball early, tires the bowlers, gives away easy run-scoring opportunities if not consistently well directed and poses no threat to good batsmen. Bouncers work best as a surprise weapon, and Hilfenhaus uses his sparingly to great effect.

Unlike team-mate Peter Siddle, who excited fans and terrified onlookers by hitting Graeme Swann all over his body in a short period before tea on Sunday. For all the pain he caused Swann, he didn’t get him out, and he crucially stuck around for another hour before being dismissed, almost inevitably, by Ben Hilfenhaus.

Those two moments alone barely do credit to the consistency with which Hilfenhaus has bowled, nor do his seven wickets so far @ 28 quite do him justice. He’s been undoubtedly the best bowler on either side, in terms of both wicket-taking threat and building pressure. On very flat pitches, plenty of batsmen have stepped up, but he’s the only bowler to excel when everyone else has struggled.

So here’s to Ben Hilfenhaus, the guy least was expected of who has thus far delivered the most. Cue him bowling terribly this morning…

As English cricket prepares to say goodbye to one of its most iconic figures in a generation, we take a look at Andrew Flintoff’s Test career and what he has meant to cricket fans in England and beyond.

The thought of Australia and England as sharks and minnows may not sit easily with the average England cricket fan, but England can consider themselves somewhat fortunate not to lose the first Test to a rampant Australia. Here we take a look at how other teams since 1980 have fared after being dominated but staying alive in the series opener.

What do they know of Cricket who only cricket know. All the world is a stage, all the world, including the cricket-field, and all the men and women merely players.

This week we look at the wicketkeeper who never got anything, the twin seven-fors, and a lot about hit-wickets.

The typical question after a match which one side has dominated but failed to win is who will take the momentum into the next match. Australia have asserted their dominance over England in all aspects of the game, and will now be confident that they can take the series comfortably if they play as well as they can. England, meanwhile, are aware that they have a few days to regroup and have got through what must surely be their worst performance of the summer completely unscathed.

So who has the momentum? For me, nobody. One could argue that the force is currently with England, but if Andrew Strauss is cleaned up in the first over by a vicious Mitchell Johnson yorker the so-called momentum will be right back with Australia again. Likewise, if England rack up 400 on the first day again, any talk of Australia’s dominance will be swiftly hushed. When the momentum is prone to changing so quickly, it’s not even there.

The score in the series is 0-0. The Lord’s test will be won by whichever team performs better over the five days, not who has an imaginary force behind them as a result of this drawn match.

It’s hard to see Lord’s producing a result with the state of the pitch in recent years (although there was an excellent sporting pitch for the West Indies game this year). Let’s hope for cricket’s sake that a series which has just come alive so dramatically isn’t killed stone dead by a horrendous 600-plays-600 draw.

As much as I try to block the winter of 2006/07 out of my mind, brutal memories of the England team being swept aside by a fantastic Australian team will always be there, ready to haunt me when I am vulnerable.

These last four days, though, the memories have been more prominent than ever. See, in general I remember the last Ashes series, and I just think, “five-nil, grim, epic fail,” or some other generic thoughts of doom. But as I watch my team fall to pieces, it’s all a lot more vivid.

The thing about 2006/07 was that England were not totally crushed from the first ball until the last throughout the series. That would have actually been preferable to the way we performed. The big problem England had throughout that series was that whenever a session went the right way, it wasn’t capitalised upon in the following one. If we batted well in an innings, we would invariaribly bowl poorly. If we ever looked like we were going to have Australia on the ropes, we wouldn’t go in for the kill. I remember jumping round my office as Monty took five wickets in Perth, only for England to go and post a lower first innings total. and that was that, as Adam Gilchrist destroyed the England attack in the second innings.

You can find such instances repeatedly over those five Tests, but enough of the history lesson. The point is that if you look at this Test so far, England have been dominated, yet it need not have been that way.

At the end of the first day, it was probably 2-1 to Australia in terms of sessions, but they had only just shaded the final session, when they dismissed Flintoff and Prior late on. This is key. Had England opened up with those two batsmen the next day, we might well be looking at a different contest altogether.

But in the match’s fourth session, the England lower-order posted 99 runs, which should really have had their tails up as they came out to bowl. England had won the first session and posted a good total. It was time to make it count. To go in for the kill…

I don’t need to remind you about the partnership Ponting and Katich put on, so I won’t. But I’ll fast forward to Friday’s morning session, and once again it was a great session for England. Three much needed wickets, and there was the chance to still emerge from the first innings with a lead. The momentum was with England and..and..and – what did Australia wind up posting? Something like 3000-6 I think.

Australia really have batted brilliantly here, and the ball that got Prior back in the first innings in particular was a good one. But at each point in the match where England had momentum and looked like making a contest of it, they just fizzled away, said, “here you go Australia, you take the initiative and run with it.”

All sorts of pessimism is flying around in the wake of the first four days of these Ashes. England might yet not lose this match. But if we are to see the urn back in English hands this summer, then the players need to remember that winning one session isn’t enough. When you have momentum, use it. Win days, not sessions. Starting with today, please.

It didn’t take long, did it? The teams were relatively evenly-matched for the first couple of days, and some England fans continued to allow themselves to be kidded that there wasn’t a lot between them this time around, or even that England had the better combination. Well, after four (or, minus the time lost to rain, more like three-and-a-half) days, Australia have asserted their familiar superiority and England their familiar inability to produce their best so long as the opposition comes from Australia, regardless of how good the actual players are or aren’t.

Sunil Gavaskar turned sixty today. I too will turn sixty in seven months time and that, perhaps, makes it easier to accept Sunil Gavaskar as an old man (if sixty is old) and not the same youngster who so very suddenly burst upon the collective psyche of Indian cricket fans thirty-nine winterrs ago.

Childish Things have released the first patch for International Cricket Captain 2009 addressing various bugs in the initial release.