Is your glass still half empty?

OPTIMISM is a funny old thing.

Ask an Australian if his glass of beer is half full and, after noting how strong it tastes compared to back home, he will agree wholeheartedly (mate).

On the other hand, ask an Englishman the same question and not only will he suggest the same glass is half-empty, he’ll also worry that his own beer is infected with swine flu and that someone the other side of the bar is looking at him a bit funny.

Thus it was that as soon as England started to wobble when attempting to bowl Australia out before they reached a world record score of 522 in the second Test at Lord’s, our doubting Thomases sprung into action.

“Australia are going to win this,” they said, shaking their heads at suggestions that an all-time record fourth innings score in all forms of cricket was highly unlikely.

“They’ll knock them off, they always do. It’s too late, we have let them off the hook. The rest of the summer is a write-off.”

Thank goodness for Freddie. The most iconic cricketer England has produced since Ian Botham lives for moments like these and, not for the first time on the biggest of Ashes occasions, Andrew Flintoff provided an emphatic response to the nay-sayers by ripping through Australia’s lower order.

Through guts, skill and buckets full of enthusiasm, he made it happen just as the game was slipping away. Figures of 5-92 didn’t do justice to a full-on, powerful and intimidating performance which bare statistics can’t measure.

Hopefully, Flintoff can carry on chipping away at our national pessimism for the remainder of the series. Honestly, we can win this.

Either that, or it can rain heavily all day, every day, for the rest of the summer. Perhaps we could move all the remaining Tests to Old Trafford?


AGE is nothing but a number. The cliché of choice for the balding fifty-something divorcee who has just snagged himself a student girlfriend, this weekend Tom Watson went so close to providing conclusive evidence in support of the notion.

At 59 years old, and having had a hip replacement operation last year, the five-time Open champion should, by rights, have been putting his feet up in a US commentary box after missing the midway cut at Turnberry.

Instead, he went within a whisker of pulling off one of the greatest sporting achievements ever seen. Had his ball died on landing on the 18th green, instead of thudding off enthusiastically past the hole and into the rough, there would be no for the qualifier in the headline ‘The Old Fogey Almost Did It’.

A bogey meant a play-off with Stewart Cink and hearts sank around the globe. There was only ever one winner from that point and even when picking up the claret jug, Cink sounded apologetic for nudging aside an almost-pensioner.