Why Kasprowicz is the new McDermott, and other reaction

Matthew Hayden’s single ball innings was everything it had promised to be...
- Nick Whittock, Ashes, 6.8.05

January 26, 1993: Adelaide Oval. Australia needs two runs to win against the West Indies. Walsh bowls short to McDermott, the ball brushes his glove and is taken by wicketkeeper Junior Murray. West Indies wins by one run. Or did the ball come off McDermott's helmet?

August 7, 2005: Edgbaston. Australia needs three runs to win against England. Harmison bowls short to Kasprowicz, who fends the ball off his glove to wicketkeeper Geraint Jones. England wins by two runs. But did it strike the glove that was not in contact with the bat?

While the English random word generators are coming up with new ways of describing Flintoffesque acts of heroism, the Sydney Morning Herald is preoccupied with the semantics of Kasprowicz's dismissal. Read Jano Gibson's dissection of the Kasprowicz dismissal on SMH Online and then watch their poorly-encoded Windows Media copy of the Sky Sports slomo replay.

Just as batting, bowling and fielding are subject to the foibles of human ability, so too is umpiring. Billy Bowden made the only humanly possible call. As they say, read about it in tomorrow's papers.

Which brings us to that hotbed of media diversity, the British tabloid market. Precisely what drugs they are on in the Mirror editorial meetings, I do not know.

More credible British media coverage from the Grauniad (someone else's random word generation, not mine), Telegraph, Times, and Independent.

At the Australian Murdoch mansions, I give you Crash Craddock. Maybe more tomorrow.

It would be remiss if I didn't mention Rob Smyth's blog-when-you-don't-have-a-blog of the final session at the Guardian. Anand Vasu's complete, quarter-megabyte commentary for CricInfo can be found here.

In more conventional blogland, the Corridor of Uncertainty's day four blog includes ninety comments - a great group blog going there. Ubersportingpundit has another literate collection of observations about the Test. The blog simply known as The Ashes has a superb photo gallery of re-enactments of key events from the game. Nick Whittock, whose cricket blog is even more eccentric than mine, reminds us all that Mister Infredible's surname is but an eight-letter word beginning with F and ending with Off.