AGB Cricket

FIFTH TEST: THE OVAL

Hot on the heels of Steve Harmison kidding himself about Steve Smith and ball tampering, comes Jimmy Anderson kidding himself about pitch doctoring.

"When you go to Australia, go to India, go to Sri Lanka – they prepare pitches that suit them. I feel like we could just be a little bit more biased towards our own team."

"We go to Australia and get pitches that suit them."

"They come over here and get pitches that suit them. It doesn't seem quite right. I think they've probably suited Australia more than us."

Anderson added he "would have liked to have seen a bit more grass but that's the nature of the game here".

"When you're selling out – like Lancashire selling out five days of Test cricket – it's hard not to produce a flat deck."

Coincidentally, I wrote about pitch tampering in the Summer of Kidding Ourselves.

FOURTH TEST: OLD TRAFFORD

England definitely have the momentum. Meanwhile, Australia drops Khawaja for Smith and rotates Pattinson for Starc.

THIRD TEST: HEADINGLEY

England and pretty much every pundit is agreed: England has the momentum.

NOMENTUM

To all you tryhard wannabe experts whose strongest held opinion is the last opinion you heard, and who said Australia had the momentum going from the draw - THE DRAW!! - at Old Trafford to Riverside, get stuffed. There is no such thing as momentum from Test to Test. Find something else to write about, like listing Test cricketers whose names start with a number (mental note: look up batsmen whose names start with a number) or batsmen who have made 99 while using a green handled bat or something similarly suited to your mediocre understanding of the caper.

SECOND TEST: LORDS

Bit late to the party. Hors de combat (which, in case you were unaware, is French for hors de combat). Missed the washed out first day, which, given the nature of Test cricket, could have racked up myriad comments. Then missed the weird second day where we won the toss, sent England in, and rolled the Poms for 250-odd despite almost every English batsman notching double figues. That feels like more of a comment on the English batsmen rather than the Australian bowling, so we may have dodged one courtesy of English generosity. However, since I went to sleep during the Luncheon Adjornment, I haven't seen many of the dismissals and could be wildly off the mark.

FIRST TEST: EDGBASTON

I see no reason to alter this prediction.