Cricket

Once again England managed to lift and dash our spirits in the space of a single day. At the end, 51/2 at the stumps in reply to Australia's 244 all out leaves things nicely poised - we need one decent partnership to hopefully get a lead, and then we'll see what happens. Mind you, we need to make sure we don't have to score more than 100 to win should we be fortunate to find ourselves on top in this test - the fragility of our batting is still there in the way Cook and Bell failed this evening.

Kudos to the England selectors for finally seeing sense and picking Monty Panesar ahead of Ashley Giles. Here's what Ricky Ponting thought of Panesar in the run up to the game (see here): "I think there will be some pressure on him. We will be very positive against him, there's no doubt about that. If he plays he'll be a bit nervous and that will dictate the way he bowls. I'm sure they'll have some field placements in place to make sure that we don't get at him too much too early. But with a lot of left-handers in our batting order, I think they'll enjoy the ball spinning into them."

Monty took seven balls to take his first Ashes wicket, and finished with figures of 5/92 from 24 overs. Symonds hit him for two sixes and one four in one over - Monty's response was to get him out with a top-edge to Jones. Elsewhere, Steve Harmison signalled his relief at surviving the selection process (Mahmood replaced James Anderson, presumably because he can bat in Ashley Giles' position) by taking 4/48, including trapping Ponting lbw for 2, a massive wicket.

A long way to go yet, and England will probably throw it away again, but at least they've responded well to the shock of throwing away the last Test... And Monty will hopefully go from strength to strength - we've never had a spin bowler like him in living memory...