Ashes First Test Day 2 (aka the final day), November 22, 2025, Optus Arena, Perth

 Well that was interesting. To win a Test match you've got to take 20 wickets. Taking 10 cheaply to secure a first innings lead isn't enough.

Attendance over the two days was close to 100,000 (51,000 yesterday and 49,000 today), by far the biggest crowd Ive ever been to for a Test match. When you think that the capacity at Lord's is 26,000 and that is our biggest ground, you get the idea.

I had an elevated view today which enabled me to look at the whole field of play at once see the pic below

We lost this game because key wickets were thrown away with daft shots ("How to snatch defeat out of the jaws of victory" by B McCullum is a good reference) and our bowlers just didn't perform today they all looked knackered with no stamina.

Okay there were  a couple of controversial umpiring decisions. Was Mitchell Starc's catch off his own bowling to dismiss Zak Crawley for his second first over duck of the match clean?. The law regarding a clean catch is not as simple as you might think. You can take a look here. And should Jamie Smith have been given out caught behind when the 'snickometer' seemed to record a signal even when the video image showed that the ball was nowhere near the bat. That got me thinking if anyone had ever looked at the signal to noise ratio of 'snicko' There is certainly noise in the system. The audio channel is picked up by a microphone at the base of one of the stumps, and  is 'cleaned up' to filter out ambient noise. In Smith's case the signal was very weak and had a very flat waveform not typical of contact with the edge of the bat, and given that the third umpire took 5 minutes to review the footage, suggests that  he wasn't sure about the situation and he should have given the benefit of the doubt to the batter, and concluded Not Out.

I don't think though that either of these decisions had much effect on the outcome of the game.

The innings of Travis Head for the Aussies was awesome it was the third fastest century in the history of Test cricket (69 deliveries)., and we all rightfully applauded it.

Towards the end as the inevitable drew near it became more entertaining for us to watch the crowd making beer snakes.

Today was the anniversary of the assassination of President John F Kennedy and I wonder if today we saw the assassination of Bazball?

To paraphrase Robert F Kennedy a few hours before he got shot "Let's go on to Brisbane and win there"

Sorry to end on a gloomy note, but we are up against it now. And yes I am still very glad I came...