Having said that THIS series has been five games, all of which mattered and the last three of which have been as nailbiting as you can get from Test cricket. If the rain holds off, the prospects of England playing for a draw seem intriguing.

(And all of this I gladley put above even the various ties of the Proteas in World Cup play. Two tournaments in a row they tie a match and drop out…)

Taking nothing away from Laxman’s innings – I clearly remember cursing him in disbelief at the time.

Best series? how long is living memory? West Indies in England, 1963, will do me.

Growing up in Ireland, outside of some particular small social circles, in the 60’s and 70’s it was a complete aberration and even slightly dangerous to watch cricket at all. I had extra reason as my Father used to enjoy watching it on TV, I have memories of him sitting in on sunny Sunday afternoons with the blinds closed watching cricket through a ridiculously noisy signal. At that time anything that my Father liked was anathema to me so I was with the majority opinion that this game was some sort of incomprehensible, demented imperialist joke.
Then I started working in a TV repair shop and it turned out that the guy I was working for was a cricket fanatic. Our normal routine was to do our bench work in the workshop in the mornings and do our house calls in the afternoons. When summer came around the routine changed for every second week and we were brought in early and all calls were to be finished by midday at which point we were locked into the workshop and the serious business of sitting down to watch the cricket began. My fellow apprentice was a diehard gaelic football fan from a distinguished footballing family, he resisted strongly and we hatched cunning plans to reorganise this forced leisure more into the kind of thing we were good at, which was more along the lines of driving around the countryside eyeing up girls, smoking joints, listening to the likes of Morrison, Dylan, the Clash and Costello and endlessly discussing the horses we were backing and the books we were reading, Midnights Children was a favourite as it and the music from then still remain. Luckily for us our plans to get out and enjoy the sunshine were foiled, our boss was a complete psycho whose involvement in the religious groups Opus Dei gave him some strange sense of duty to educate us in the path of the righteous, which for him cricket was a essential part of. Lucky also that this was 1981 and Brearly, Botham, Willis and Co. treated us to one of the great sporting summers of all time. Lucky also that cricket was all I caught from my increasingly nutty boss and now I can look forward to this weekend when myself and my now elderly Father, still divided by the deep chasm of religion, will savour together the sport and the speculation, the tension and the rain, Warne’s amazing spin and my attempts to spin some arbitrage out of Betfair’s markets.

If you have got this far through my reminiscences you might want to know who I’ll be supporting, we will be neutral on the side of england, just like in the war :)

Anyway, another weekend of 5am starts for me. I don’t mind losing terrestrial coverage, but if Sky tries to take away Test Match Special next time round, I may well have to take action.

I still favour us to win this match, unless the bloody poms manage to specially prepare their weather for the home side, as dsquared is trying to do. The English team have played to their best, whereas our lot have been below their usual standard for a lot of the time – they must come good soon.

But of course that’s what I said before the last match.

Go Warnie!

The loss at Headingly must up have upset them somewhat but the blow would have been softened somewhat because they had backed England at tea on the fourth day at 500-1.

Lillee won £5,000, but said he spent it on a return trip and accommodation to the Gold Coast for the coach driver who placed the bet.

The matter was never properly investigated by the spineless ACB and the pair were so “loveable” that the mejia and therefore the Australian public let them off.

But the fact of the matter is that the pair ratted on their team mates and Australian fans. Australia should never have lost that game but with two players clearly “distracted” they never had a chance.

In any event I cannot recall their “runner” ever having come forward.

They should have been banned for life.