Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune without the words,
And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.

I've heard it in the chilliest land
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.
-Emily Dickinson

A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush
-Proverb

So I was walking along Watergate Bay beach on Wednesday evening and pondering whether England could win the Ashes, when I saw a kestrel. Kestrels aren't very big birds, and they don't draw attention to themselves in the way that, say, the golden eagles that I saw in Northern Spain, or the seagulls you see in Cornwall do. And yet, once you have one in your sight, it's difficult to take your eyes off a kestrel, because it's rather like a hummingbird. It can do something more or less in possible. It can hang. Why a kestrel can hang in the air is a puzzle for me- it's obviously got something to do with the shape of its wings and something to do with the tautness of its body, but frankly pretty amazing.

And so, (and this was a Simon Barnes free thought, though his 'Bad Birdwatching' book has been much in my mind since New Year), to poetic birdisms that would be appropriate for Edgbaston. The first one as above, the Dickinson, (usually quoted just as the first line, which is kinda cool cos it means the reader has to work out the metaphor rather than just have it given to them like a cooked goose on a plate), was obvious, and beautiful, and apposite. Even though England looked as if their best attempts had been blown away at Lord's, that their first morning was no answer to McGrath, there was still the hope of Pietersen and of Harmison. The second took longer, but really sums up the way you might have felt by tea- England may have started well, but Australia were still 1-0 up. Rather a Test match in the bag than a speculative score at the end of the first day, at the beginning of a long match.

And yet, two days in, it seems the second quote has flown further than the first. For all the hope in the world, perhaps, wouldn't have written a much more professional and clinical performance than England's over the first six sessions. This is not to say that they will win the Test match, (though they will playing merely as well as Australia through the second innings), or to say that they were perfect. It's also not to say that this has been a one-sided Test match- one of the joys of England's superiority thusfar is that no-one in Australia's team, except Brett Lee, has underperformed. But hope has ended up peeling more potatoes than scepticism, and here's why.

Because hope allowed good fortune to go England's way. It's unusual that you can say that a Test Match is going England's way before the toss, and doubly so that my first cheer of the day comes before 10am, but Glenn McGrath's absence, after his simply magical spell on Thursday at Lord's, could only be a good omen. I turned to Paul, who indulgently has watched most of the first two days with me, and said, "Now all we need to do is win the toss and bat." Australia won the toss. Wank. They bowled. Myuh? This might not precisely be a Hussain Brisbane combination, but it was a dopey and stupid decision and even before Australia lose the Dyson vacuum cleaner spin of Shane Warne on the fourth day, they've already conceded a 99 run lead on first innings. Ponting was wrong, and it's delightful after Steve Waugh, (who was a tactical genius on the Hussain Fleming level, and had an even better team, which built the Australia mythos), that Ricky Ponting is fallible after all. Not only that, he gets out to our spinners, but more on that later.

To go back to the thing with feathers, England batted as if they hoped they could do the impossible throughout the first day- which was bat four sessions and score 550. It was admirable, breathtaking, stupid, ludicrous and wonderful, all at the same time. It was like trying to balance a cat on your nose. It was like a kestrel hanging in the air. And in the innings, a few things were clarified about each batsman- the pitch was a handy little psychological examination. Many of the things are known to all cricket fans already, and the following may read a touch like an idiot's guide, but the generality of their play was encapsulated in the ephemeral, which was sorta neat.

Trescothick has poor technique but one of the best Test temperaments, (read, fearless, arrogant giant) in the world. He's still scored the highest score in the Test match so far, and only one off Clarke's 91 which is the highest of the series in the absence of any centuries. He started off this rollercoaster, scoring an improbable 77 before lunch, and giving the impression he'd be unhappy with less than 200 before tea. That he perished to one of his classic attempts to angle to third man caught behind is tonic, nay, ambrosia to people like Boycott who believe birds can't fly. But for those few moments, like the people who believe in an old black guy nailed to a cross coming back to life, we believed the stupid, and the impossible.

Strauss never learnt to fly, but had good fun stretching his arms on a nice easy pitch. He's an organised player with no obvious flaws, and his only failure is his lack of ambition. You never feel he's going to score a big hundred or have 23 children, because he's happy with 114 and a Ford Mondeo. In some situations this is reassuring, like a nice cup of tea and a sit down. In this situation, it was a bit dull.

Vaughan is coming to terms with the fact he's had his wings clipped. It's not England's fault that against India and Australia in 2002 he was in the best form of most people's life, but he still bats as if he deserves to play that well. He must learn a little of the Hussain, and graft and graft, or he'll simply plummet, swallow-style, into mediocrity, as his top-edged pull did into Lee's protective, bird-saving hands at fine leg.

Bell is not yet Test class. Wrong Ginger One, indeed.

Pietersen is like Trescothick with technique. We've been waiting all summer to see, if Pietersen and Flintoff batted together, who would go faster, soar higher. Turns out, Pietersen turned like a nurturing father to a newly hatched cygnet and said, you fly as high as you like, I'll look after the nest .He looked like he could outrace Flintoff if he wanted to but, extraordinarily, he was too mature to bother. He dropped anchor, whilst scoring at four an over, and when the tail came in, he clattered the boundaries. This man is immense. The only remaining question is whether he can score 150 regularly. Much like Strauss, but you kind of think Pietersen has has sights on 450. Or perhaps 20,000 Test runs. That kind of swagger.

Flintoff batted with the wilful joy, the capacity to believe that means he'll still be a folk hero when Pietersen has become a battered Thorpe like figure. He got 68 in no time and got out without really worrying. It's invigorating and silly and gives you warm feelings inside. Flintoff and Pietersen's 100 partnership, which took an hour, was one of the most purely joyful hours of Test cricket I've ever seen. Like Flintoff that Sunday against South Africa but from both ends.

Geraint Jones has improbably become out of nick after cresting the plumage in the one-dayers. But he hasn't dropped anything important, importantly.

And then the tail all go 15 or more, which is testament to this moronic, life-affirming hope that England have nowadays. It used to be one of the major differences between England and Australia back in 97, how our tail never wagged. This time England were 290-6 and 407 all out, Australia 260-6 and 308 all out. Tables, you have turned it more than Shane Warne to Strauss in, well, either innings. Each has their funny little character. Giles proud and rather scornful. Hoggard dogged and slightly contemptuous. Harmison the mayfly sweeper. Jones the best number eleven I think I've ever seen, and clearly shouldn't come in so low, (I reckon they're putting Harmison at ten to allow him to get out and be ready to bowl, personally).

407, and of course, we were denied that irritating Australian twenty minutes of batting by rain, whereas today Warne bowled Strauss again. Strauss may currently be the most unluckiest man in the world, both Warne's three foot spinners of the match were bowled to him, and both bowled him. What can you do but go back to your Mondeo? Meantime the Australian bowling looks a lame duck without McGrath, with Warne basically being asked to open the bowling after Ponting repeatedly loses faith in Lee and Gillespie, (both of whom, the former particularly, have bowled poorly), and trying his hardest, but the seamers with the exception of Kasparowicz just after lunch on the first day looking untalismanic and third-tier. England will easily win the Ashes in four years time.

Whether they can win it this year is down to the continuation of belief and hope in the face of genius, which Warne is. Giles today grasped the nuthatch and took three excellent wickets as well as routinely befuddling Langer's Athertonian stubbornness. Hayden continues to be stuck, Ponting looks ominous as does Clarke, (but the wheelie bin saw to both of them), Katich is solidly impressive, rather like Strauss, Gilchrist dangerous and beautiful, (watching him face England is like watching your only daughter be put in a cage with a king cobra), and the Australian tail much more lightweight. Flintoff's on a hat-trick, (Bothamesque here? Not yet. A great player in his own right? Sure.) Harmison was robbed in not taking a wicket after hitting all 192 of Langer's bones, Hoggard bored, Jones with admirable reverse-sweep.

In Test Matches like this, you don't even need The Claw to provide further entertainment. And that's the highest praise I can give both to one of the best Test Matches I've ever seen, (thus far), and to England's ability to believe, like Icarus, the Wright brothers or R Kelly, that they can fly.

Third Day

I haven't got the energy for all that stuff today, partly because I've spent most of the day loading many, many books into fewer but many boxes, and partly because it was draining just watching today's play. It was the well-written comedy or the nicely timed minor cadence- genuine sadness and horror permeated by delight and ending in happy certainty. Trescothick did what he usually did and wafted outside off stump. Vaughan looks severely out of form. Both Pietersen and, somewhat more crucially, Bell were unlucky. Bell doubly so since now his scores look like four failures when he actually played pretty well today and didn't hit Warne's leg-spinner. Also unfortunate the other run-dry middle orderer, Geraint Jones, who got the snorter of the day with lots of uneven bounce.

And at which point it was 75-6 and 101-7 and felt like it would be 120-10. Flintoff's innings of 73 may be remembered for longer than the 95 we saw, because it was an Ashes match, but the style of it was more or less identical to the fourth morning in its latter and more imperious stages, except that it didn't go on for so long. It was the 50 partnership with Simon Jones rather than the 100 partnership with Harmison. But it was still soul-lifting stuff. The Australian innings, in which Australia rarely batted poorly and England bowled beautifully was the real main course though. Flintoff's first over was one of the best I've seen in Test match cricket- 7 wicket taking balls and to Ponting's credit that he survived from ball three to ball seven. Most others would have had splayed stumps by that point. Giles deceiving Gilchrist in the flight and snaring Katich was also fun, and both Trescothick, (twice, one slightly dodgily) and Bell took fine and memorable catches.

But perhaps the abiding image will be Harmison, bowling another beautiful spell seemingly unrewarded by a wicket, bowling the final ball of the day to Michael Clarke. Clarke had spent the last ten mintues whining to Rudi Koertzen about Flintoff's length, (he was bowling full-tosses, not beamers, so why he didn't gratefully smack them to the boundary is anyone's guess). And the annoyinhg and occasionally brilliant but more often unctuous Clarke was facing Harmison with hidden terror. Suddenly, almost without having seen the ball, the television in The Boater resolved itself into a picture of an off stump, a leg stump, and a conspicuous gap between.

And then the match was all but won....

Fourth Day

I didn't write about this on the back of the tumult, and did consider leaving that wonderfully ironic, in retrospect, final line in. Australia couldn't get more than a hundred runs with their last two wickets, and yet did. They got so close that I knew England had lost. When Simon Jones dropped that difficult chance at third man, I knew that was it. That was the measure of how this greatest of all Test Matches came to a great, an unfathomable conclusion. There were other tight tense conclusions in what would become a Test series so aristocratic amongst its peers, so notable, so dissimilar to its surroundings, that even cricket's poverty-stricken, those who didn't tune in to a ball of the previous year's West Indies series, those who have never heard of Ian Botham, enjoyed the excitement and enjoyed the victory. But these others never convinced me. At Old Trafford, we were never going to lose- win or draw was either way a good result for England and the series had swung to us. At Trent Bridge, whilst we tried to lose a match we'd already won, six down for 110, I never truly believed that Shane Warne would single-handedly bowl us out, or that the injured Jones, S wouldn't amble out, Cowdrey style, to the middle if three more runs were still required.

But at Edgbaston, we had lost it. The idiots were going to nurdle their way home. Lee and for goodness' sake Kasprowicz. It had been a cause of celebration that McGrath couldn't bowl at Edgbaston, but would that he had batted. So whichever way you hear it, the bit of commentary where Harmison bowls, Kasprowicz' released hand gloves the ball, Jones takes the catch and The Claw raises the finger, is remarkable. As it happened, two Australians were commentating on Test Match Special and Channel 4. Jim Maxwell, a good pro if slightly biassed, produced the tantalising, unbelieving, almost uncountenancing "England have WON, BY TWO RUNS- a stunning bit of disbelief. Richie Benaud, nearer the Gods, was extraordinarily able to play not the disbelief of the thwarted Aussie, that Maxwell played, but the narrator of the great theatre. Jones. Bowden.

I heard neither of these, because I had leapt off my sofa and was cantering round the room. At 2-0 down, the series was lost. Period. And we had lost the series. I knew we had lost the Test Match. And yet.

As in 1981, that And yet is why cricket is the nearest to life you'll get in sport, and the nearest to heaven you'll get in summer