For all of you fools that don’t like cricket. Well you missed one of the great Test matches of all time. (Of course, if you don’t like cricket… being a fool and all… you won’t care one jot. And I detest you for it, and don’t give me all that “I was picked on at sports at school, or the game is boring, or any game that doesn’t have a result after five days is stupid, or I’ve had more fun having a vasectomy without anasthetic” rubbish. Coz I don’t want to listen to it. You’re all fools!)

Okay, assuming I haven’t alienated everyone… I’m still trembling over Sunday night. It’s not often you get the privelege of seeing such a great game of anything. Cricket is a funny game. HA! No, really, it is. Even me, a drooling cricket fanatic, will admit that sometimes the game can be boring. And usually, even the close Test Matches have their soft moments (like those rubbish character bits in action flicks, you know the bit where the guy and girl talk all lovey dovey and they kiss and they kiss some more and they get nekkid and they do naughty, naughty things… the soft moments of Test cricket are just like that).

But not this game. From go to woe, this game was BRILLIANT. Before the game started… in fact thirty minutes before the game started… Australia’s brilliant fast bowler and man who turned the first Test for the Aussies, Glenn McGrath, trod on a cricket ball and twisted his ankle. Then we saw 407 runs and 10 wickets on the first day. 11 wickets (including the ball of the century from Shane Warne to remove Strauss) and 323 runs on the second day, over 350 runs and 16 wickets on the third day and the fourth day…

…Hollywood has never been so good.

I’ll be honest when Michael Clarke was dismissed by Harmison at the close of the third day I thought Australia was gone. (Actually, I’d been thinking that since the Gilchrist dismissal, the Clarke wicket was only the last nail in the coffin).

Australia came into that last day with only two wickets in hand and needing 107 runs.

I really honestly thought we would last 5 minutes. Warne would go out snicking one, and Kasper would be out first ball LBW and that would be it.

But Shane and Brett and Michael had other ideas and the next 90 minutes had the full house mesmerised and oh God was it just spine tingling, too see these three tailenders creep ever so close to the target, with runs coming off edges and body parts and bits of metal and plastic. Getting so close. Getting within and bee’s dick of victory. (and me and Dave and Benjamin are sitting there, with me yelling and screaming and the other two checking out my DVD/Big Finish/book collection… stupid fools!!!!!!)

And then…

… it’s over. Kasper has gloved one to Geraint Jones, the crowd is screeching and the English team have found God as they run around the oval like a bunch of excited school boys. Australia had lost by 2 runs. The tightest ever margin in an Ashes Test.

Arse!!!!!

But what a game. How good was Freddie (Andrew) Flintoff. Taking those wickets (the ball to get Ponting was a jaffer) and making 70 odd on the third day when England looked all but gone. That innings was what saved the Poms (and especially the last wicket partnership between Simon Jones and Flintoff). And it was an innings of courage and guts and determination.

Warne’s 6 wickets in the Pom’s second innings only showed how great a bowler he was. He is now one off from 600 Test Wickets. Every wicket he takes is another slice of history. Okay, he’s maybe a controversial bloke at times, and perhaps Simone Warne aint his biggest fan at the mo, but he is definitely the greatest bowler of all time. And how lucky we are to see him.

And as for the series – well for a change the Poms are showing they have the players (specifically, Pieterson, Harmison and Flintoff) who can take it up to the Aussies.

The series is tied at 1 all. Three more Test to go, with Test 3 starting on Thursday at Old Trafford.

We are in for a big one people. And I can’t bloody well wait.

And for those of you who won’t be watching, coz you find the sport boring, well –

YOU’RE ALL FOOLS I TELLS YA!!!!