Australia v England, 4th Test (Melbourne) - 26th-? December

I love Jonathan Trott.

Currently unbeaten on 141, his Ashes average is 96.33 and in 17 Test matches he averages about 63. Earlier today he had me struggling to remember the name Ravi Bopara.

He says it's down to hard work and is happy to admit that he's not the most exciting batsman to watch:

"I think it's important I don't over-rev when I'm batting and try to look to over-hit the ball.

"I try to be calm and patient and play my natural game, which is to obviously just accumulate here and there and let the other guys hit the boundaries and sixes."

I'm happy to admit that I'd rather watch Trott build a big hundred than get the quick fix of a Pieterson 50 (although both have their place, obviously).

And it's not just Trott. I find myself feeling incredibly happy for Matt Prior - for so long all we heard about was wicketkeeping clangers and finding a keeper-batsman worth his place in the side. Well, Chris Read, Geraint Jones and Tim Ambrose can look forward to a bit more County cricket because now we can watch a performance including six catches and 75 not out and there's nothing particularly surprising about it.

I'm a bit worried about Collingwood though. Now is definitely the time for his place-saving 150 but it doesn't look like he'll get a second dig in this match. The selectors must be tempted to give Morgan a go in Sydney, especially if we've already wrapped up the Ashes.

With the ball Tremlett is having a field day on these hard bouncy wickets, Anderson looks to have recovered from his tired third Test and even Bresnan's come in to take two wickets while Finn rests up. Swann may not have been the match-winner we expected but we've had so many others that it doesn't seem to matter.

I'm staying up for the 3rd day's play tonight. I fancy Prior, Bresnan and Swann to throw everything at it and push the lead up to 500. Then if there's any swing at all we could be 4 or 5 deep into the Aussies again by the close.

Too confident? Maybe. We all saw what happened in the 3rd Test. But this is an England team with confidence and, possibly for the first time in my lifetime, more quality than the Australians.

Australia v England, 1st Test (Brisbane) – 25-29th November

Nocturnal Cricketers

At the end of each Test Match the vast majority of cricket writers cobble together a hastily scribbled “marks out of ten” piece, a quick and easy guide to the best and worst performers and a perfect way to generate thousands of ill-informed opinions from the general public.

Obviously I would be delighted to do the same, however I’m afraid I find myself at a slight disadvantage when it comes to reviewing the First Test: like many people in the UK I didn’t watch a single minute of it.

I don’t have Sky TV and I do have a day job so staying up to watch all or some of the action is out of the question. Instead all I can do is go to bed full of optimism, with an idea in my head of what would be a good outcome, and wake up to hear Jonathan Agnew’s report on the Radio 4 Today programme. It’s not ideal because this means you have to take in a whole day’s play in just a few seconds - one minute play hasn’t started, the next minute it’s time for stumps. Cricket is a slow-boiling game of concentration and building partnerships; you can’t just hear the score and feel satisfied.

The First Test

On the night of the first day (if that makes sense) I went to bed, I didn’t know who would win the toss, but I decided that if England batted they would probably be 270-7 when I woke up. What is more, I had the last two wickets falling in the last fifteen minutes of play – a perfect example of Boycott’s “add two wickets to the score” scenario. When I woke up I heard that England were indeed batting but that is was actually slightly worse: 236-8. But I didn’t know that Pieterson had looked promising in his 43 or that Ian Bell (76) is finally becoming the batsman we know he should be. I missed Siddle’s hatrick for crying out loud – six wickets including a hatrick in an Ashes Test on your 26th birthday! Crikey. What am I doing with my life?

A lot of the excitement is lost when you’re not engaged in the action. At the very least you simply want to be able to see what’s going on as it’s going on, but ideally you would have all of the following things in place:

* Live coverage on the TV
* The sound turned up so you can hear the commentary and crowd noise
* People around you who understand and enjoy cricket
* Some sort of carbonated or fermented liquid in a glass

On the morning after the second day’s play I got to work and tried to at least generate some cricket-based discussion. We may have all missed the action but there must be some talking points. I asked my colleagues:

“Did anyone else switch on the radio this morning and get excited when you heard that Australia were 143-5 at tea but then have your hopes dashed because it turned out Hussey and Haddin added an unbroken 77 taking them to within just 40 runs of England’s first innings total?”

The answer was no, of course - completely the wrong audience. My colleagues know absolutely nothing about cricket. They think a late cut is what happens when you go to the hairdressers after work.

I realised I needed something to soften the news in the morning, and once I discovered it, I started using the ECB (England Cricket Board) highlights for the last couple of days. Each session is summed up in a couple of minutes and you at least get to see the wickets fall and a few boundaries.

http://www.ecbtv.co.uk/page/Video/AshesHighlights201011UK

Then only two wickets fell in the last two days and it finished in a draw. Try explaining that to my colleagues.

Results

My need to hear information first-hand extends beyond cricket – I never like to be the last to know.

In my other life as a football fan I support Watford and I always want them to win, but when I was younger a goal always meant more to me if either a) I was there at the match to see it, or b) I was the first person to notice the score change on Teletext. Hearing about a goal or a result second hand takes a lot of the thrill out of it – I don’t want to come back from the bathroom to find out something everyone else in the room already knows.

It’s the same with The X-Factor. No, hear me out here please. As a man, I find the result of the X-Factor vote the most important part of the show. Well, you wouldn’t watch it for the music would you. I can’t watch the live performances and then miss the Sunday night verdict. I wouldn’t watch a football match till the 80th minute then walk out of the pub.

The Second Test

To bring this back to cricket, as I write this we’ve already had the first day of the Second Test and I woke up this morning to hear some good news from Mr Agnew: Australia 245 all out and at one point they were 2-3! And I missed it again. Boo!

And this is why Saturday night will be our Ashes All-Nighter. We’ve found a man with Sky TV and we’re going to join in. In an act of desperation we are giving up sleep just so we can say “we saw it happen WHEN IT HAPPENED... even if it’s just the third day of the Second Test Match – the eighth day of a 25-day series”.

Until then, we have the second day to negotiate - I’ll wake up tomorrow morning and just have the score fed to me. As a cricket blog I suppose it’s my responsibility to make a prediction here, so I’ll be brave and say I expect us to be in the lead with five wickets down. Come on England!