Aussie, Aussie, Aussie, oy vey. The Brits racked up 157 runs and haven't taken a wicket at the close of Day 1. If the Brits win, they retain The Ashes, because even if the Aussies were to win Test Match Five, it would be a 2-2 draw, and you have to win outright to take The Ashes away from the current holder. It's like the Ryder Cup, without Miguel Angel Jimenez's cigar, or his fans.
It's looking pretty bleak for the Men Down Under. They were batting everything right into the hands of the English defenders and looked completely overmatched. The 98 run total was the lowest for Australia in Melbourne EVER. The Australian announcers were claiming that the pitch was great for bowling, but then Alastair Cook (not the late Masterpiece Theatre guy) and Andrew Strauss went out and are on their way to centuries, which means scoring a hundred runs or more. It's amazing to me how much the weather makes a difference. Cricket is very much like golf in that subtle changes in the surface make enormous changes in scoring. The Brits won the coin toss and elected to bowl, because it was cloudy and they felt they could make the ball move better and "miss bats" as they say in baseball. By the time the English started batting, the sun had come out and the pitch had presumably dried, making it harder to spin the ball and easier to score.
The only strategy possibly left for the Brits is to decide how many runs are enough. Recall that the match goes five days, and mo matter how many runs England scores, if they can't bowl out the Aussies again by the end of the fifth day, we'll get a draw and have to proceed to Test Match Five in Sydney. It shouldn't be a problem to get the Australians out again by New Year's Eve, but stranger things have happened. With the Aussies at 98 runs, you would expect the Brits to stop at 400 to 500 runs, if it goes that far.
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