Since the Ashes tour
began, Ian Botham has been talking up the impressive strike weapon
Australia has with rookie fast bowler Shaun Tait – and anyone who faces him agrees he’s seriously hostile. Now, as
Jason Gillespie concedes he’s gone for the Fourth Test at Trent Bridge
starting on Thursday, the race for his position has become a two-horse
race between the lively Tait and Michael Kasprowicz and based on the
overnight cricket at Northampton, surely Tait has shown why Botham and
other good judges rate him so highly as a future staple of our new-ball
attack.

After
Australia batted first and made 6-374 declared on the first day at Northampton
with Matthew Hayden (136) and Michael Clarke (121) smashing a weaker
attack, Northamptonshire’s only innings saw them make 9-169, before Australia batted a
second time to be 2-226 as the match was drawn – see
the scorecard here. But it was more than
enough to show why Tait must get the nod ahead of Kasprowicz. He bowled
with venom and aside from his two wickets, he also forced a third
batsman to retire hurt, and essentially sent all the right messages
that in tandem with Lee and McGrath,
he can help Australia’s new ball attack return fire with fire for the
final two Tests.

The Australian selectors are under pressure to change a team that
is looking haggard and old for all the celebrated triumphalism of its
past two Test fight-backs. Tait would certainly benefit from having the
match in Nottingham under his belt, before bowling on the normally rock
hard Oval wicket, where the series could well be decided.

UK media celebrates
English public’s new-found appetite for cricket

Whatever else
is said or written about the wonders of this Ashes series, the English game is
enjoying more than just a fleeting moment in the sun – it’s undergoing an
astonishing metamorphosis in public interest.

As Jonathan
Stevenson notes for BBC Sport: “cricket has
once again entered the mainstream of the nation’s consciousness.” And he offers
six reasons to suggest why the start of the Premiership – coming “at a time when the Ashes series is on a knife-edge –
feels to some like an unwelcome intrusion…”

Kevin Mitchell
writing about “England’s rise” in Sunday’s Observer reflects on
how six summers ago:

Nobody wanted to talk about cricket. It was dying in front of us.
Football was, as ever, the balm. The summer came to an unmourned end at the
height of August.

That
was the nadir. So, six years on to the very weekend, what minor miracle has
occurred to so transform English cricket that Michael Vaughan’s team dare to
dream of a zenith? What has given this team the audacity to interrupt the royal
progress of the almighty Australia? And why is even your auntie talking about
Thursday’s fourth Test at Trent Bridge?

While an
earlier BBC article also examines how cricket is booming:

All
the talk is of a sport re-born, not just rivalling football but challenging its
supremacy in the country’s sporting affections. Kids want to be Andrew Flintoff rather than
David Beckham. Shops are selling more cricket shirts than football tops.

People
with no previous interest in the game are asking why England didn’t
actually “win” on Monday, given they had scored more runs than
Australia over the five days.

One
newspaper columnist reckoned “this Ashes series has not so much captured the
public imagination as sent it into orbit.”