Pulling the trigger too soon on Watson

Right. So I dissed the Watson selection/Hughes dropping. But He Who Is Permanently Injured has now gone ahead and participated in an opening partnership, and whats more, is not out at the end of the first day of the Edgbaston with 62. Batting Shane! Now go on and make a ton. It won't make Hughes' dropping right, but it will justify your selection.

Pulling the trigger too soon on Hughes

So it has come to this: Phil Hughes, Australia's bright star, has been dropped after two test matches in favor of a man who can't be counted on to remain injury free on the team coach as it makes its way to Edgbaston, who has not batted higher than #6 in tests, whose opening experience is limited to one-day internationals. Given that there is little chance that Watson will be axed after one test, (though he will probably be injured soon enough) I would say this move potentially knocks Hughes out of the Ashes.

To say that I'm surprised is an understatement. As selectorial moves go, this one reeks of panic. Hughes didn't appear short of confidence in his innings, and I'd have backed him to have come good soon enough. The correct move would have to replace Mitchell Johnson with Stuart Clark, but it seems Australian selectors are doomed to make the mistakes of 2005 in reverse, where they showed excessive faith in Hayden.

I don't know if the wheels have fallen off but there are a few struts lying around on the road.

What do Phillip Hughes and Kapil Dev have in common?

A few seconds after Phillip Hughes reached his maiden century by thumping Paul Harris for two sixes, Mark Nicholas asked, "I wonder how many people have reached their maiden centuries with a six? I mean, I imagine the Kapil Devs and the Ian Bothams got to 100s with sixes after scoring their first centuries, but really, how many reached their maiden tons with a six?".

Well, you just named one, Mark. Kapil Dev reached his maiden century (going from 98 to 104), at the Ferozeshah Kotla, against Alvin Kallicharran's West Indians, on 27th January 1979 with a flicked six off Norbert Phillip - it soared over deep-backward square-leg . Kapil would have reached his 100 on January 26th (Republic Day), but in those days, test matches had rest days.

All said and done, I'd have to say Hughes' romp in that over against Harris was way more dramatic. Kapil was not playing in his second test match; he was flogging a tired, dispirited West Indian attack on the third day of the fifth test of a six-test series; and more to the point, Hughes went from 89 to 105 in the same over, on the first day of a test.

Rumours of demise greatly exaggerated etc.

Australia. South Africa. First Test. A victory by 162 runs. Three debutants. One scores a century in the first innings. One scores 75 in the second dig after an embarrassing duck in the first. The third returns match figures of 56-16-126-3. And a fast bowler, Mitchell Johnson, who frankly, has scared me more as a batsman than anything else, (at Perth and Mohali), got close to a ton, and to solving Australia's all-rounder problem (not that I think it wasn't a fake one to begin with).

South Africa could still win this series but I think the dancing over the Aussie corpse needs to stop, largely because it has been dragged away and resurrected.