Sport - The Ashes 2nd Test Days Two and Three. Let's bat. And bat.

It's that man again

A couple of days before the Ashes started Andy Flower was discussing alternatives for the England opening partnership. Trott could move up there. The second string had just arrived down under and we could call on one of them if necessary. I don't think that will be necessary do you Mr Flower? Unless we're being rather harsh on Strauss's aberrations around the position of the top of his off stump. Since that interview Cook has scored 450 runs at 225, dismissing records set by, amongst others, the great Don Bradman. Oh how the Aussies must love him.

Two days relentless batting has scored 551-4 on the board, a runs total that evokes the ghost of Adelaide past - though it is surely Ponting who is getting the fright of his life from the deja vu. Lightning doesn't strike twice. Though it might need to, from the sky and the predicted weather forecast, to save the Aussies from the spectre of defeat.

Cook went on to make 148 before he finally lost his wicket. In the meantime he'd added 502 with Trott (including the unbroken stand at the Gabba) and Kevin Pietersen had sat with his pads on for some 10 or 11 hours longer than he might have wished. And someone was always going to pay for that. By the end of day three Pietersen was 213 not out and probably only robbed of a triple century by a foreshortened day. For once it wasn't a century, a double century, of chances and drops. Only one false shot looped luckily into no-man's-land. Gone were the reverse slogs and showmanship. And those last two sentences are probably not entirely unrelated.

So what of this man?

Dear Santa/God - 3 Batsmen, 4 Bowlers...

He needs help. And he's not going to get it from his bowlers. Doherty has been cruelly exposed as out of his depth. Siddle's had his birthday. Bollinger looked laboured by the end of day two. And Ryan Harris could only manage two wickets in two days on this, the ground where he is deemed a specialist. Twenty wickets and a test victory look a long way away. The best Ponting can hope for is stubborn resistance in the batting ranks. With his own brand of bloody-minded determination the whole of English cricket probably expects him to make a century tomorrow. Unless, of course, the strain is beginning to tell. Now he knows how Mike Atherton felt for all those years.