“More power to your typing fingers, and may the goddess of sleeping toddlers smile kindly on your household!” Brendon Murley gets the none existent prize for first email of the day! (Get in touch, for the love of all that is holy, details on the left flank of this page)

Ah, the Goddess of sleeping toddlers! Smiling? She’s been gurning and blowing raspberries for the past three years Brendon, as my capacious eye bags will testify. Who needs sleep though? Especially when there is a Smörgåsbord of Antipodean Test matches to tuck into.

Run (s) Run (s) Rudolph Marnus!

“All I want for Christmas is a rock n roll ‘lectric guitar career saving 12th Test century.”

Catchy.

Marnus and McSweeney grafted away under lights last evening, can they make it count this morning and both go on to make a chatter halting score? It’ll be a fascinating first hour, it always is, isn’t it?

Both men would love to be able to crack on and will be harbouring desires of half centuries at the least. I’m harbouring desires for a 3.34am UK time cup of coffee but daren’t pad down the hallway past a snoring three year old in case of a floorboard creak and an early hours wake up that could really put the cat amongst the pigeons toddlers ‘mongst the OBOs.

This Test is ticking along at a fair old lick but pales in comparison to the warp speed happenings over the ditch. England have fired up the afterburners in Wellington. I’ll forgive you for joining Rob Smyth for a few overs on t’other OBO, make sure you come back, mind.

The Rory Burns play of the day:

Geoff was indeed in fine fettle yesterday, as was another cloud busting bloke with a wavy barnet – Mitchell Starc.

Sporting songs from the outer are usually dross, partly because they’re most often sung tunelessly by annoying drunks, and partly because they usually consist of one cringey couplet jammed with no consideration of cadence or metre into the scarcely heeded melodic line of a mid-tier radio hit. The few that are slightly more artful stand out, appearing far better by virtue of their company than they might objectively deserve. One such of recent years that provides occasional enjoyment is: “Hark, the herald angels sing – Mitchell Starc, the new-ball king.”

The phrasing fits, the use of a Christmas hymn is seasonally apt for Australia in December or January, and the sentiment reflects a cricketing truth. Starc with a lacquered Kookaburra (while that sounds a strange object to possess without context) is a menace. But swap out the lyrics of “new-ball” for “pink-ball” and it would be even more apt. In the day-night Test format, nobody has done it better.

Preamble

James Wallace