"Americans would never watch Test cricket on TV." Let me tell you a little story about what Americans will watch on our sport TV channels.

The galling thing is, Broad was right. This is the softest Australian side in some time. But the outside of the Twinkie doesn't have to be hard to make the Twinkie work, it just has to be made of former stuff than the filling.

Watching this, I cannot help but agree that Americans will never understand three-day cricket.

I was not a cricket fan in the '80s or "90s, so it's really fun for me to experience classic hits like The Inspired England Performance When The Ashes Are Already Lost.

This is a much better conversation to have than another round of County Championship/t20/Hundred discourse.

Welp, England's earliest opportunity to win back the Ashes now moves to the summer I turn 50, some of which I plan to spend watching cricket and having a mild breakdown. I'll see you then.

OH YOU DON'T SAY

Morris dancing. I could have got into Morris dancing when I moved to England. Victorian steam train restoration. Badger preservation. I could have become an officer in my local Camra branch. There were so many things that weren't cricket.

The thing about Australia isn't the absolutely crushing innings, it's that the innings where they're a bit shit turn out to be, eh, good enough.

I was hoping this post indicated availability on his part.

I've lived in several cities near the top of US crime stats. The most violent incidents I've ever experienced in my life, including the time my parents were randomly attacked in the street, happened when I lived in Nottingham. London was where I went in the UK when I wanted a menace-free weekend.

The main reason I wanted my child to be educated in the US rather than the UK is that Broad With Multiple Tracks is better than deciding what you're good at in your mid-teens.

Do we turn the "County Cricket is..." dial from "a true test of mettle" to "the problem" now, or are we supposed to wait until after Adelaide?

In cricket terms: a team that thinks it's India keeps finding out in increasingly hilarious ways that it's more New Zealand (only much less likeable.)

Labour bros are parochial fucks.

People in the US should be enraged every day about this. People in other rich countries should ponder how it is that, when the US stops doing some things, they stop getting done almost entirely.

They're missing a trick in this halftime show by not also having Tim Robinson come out to just act awkward for 45 seconds.

Was there some sort of mass email that went out to all the "funny" Australian cricket content makers that instructed them to all do the same bit about Perth wickets by birth nation?

Cannot believe they buried this USA v Namibia news under some "India v Pakistan" nonsense.

I love the idea that any of this manic lunacy can be described as a stirring comeback.

If you told cricket fans from any time other than this that one Ashes side keeps getting out because they're swaggering morons and the other side keeps getting out because they're brittle wimps, and then you asked who's who ...

Finally,the news of the day makes absolutely no sense in a *good* way.

One thing. I asked for one thing.

Ok. Obviously we've already made the pivot from "This is the year!!" to "This could still be the year." All I'm asking is that we put off "This really seemed like the year" until sometime tomorrow.

Rugby. I could have got into fucking rugby.

Odds at -2.5 that the story Bob Mortimer is telling is true.

Here's what it's like being a cricket fan in South Florida. In a few days begins the "Mayors New World t20," a four-team, 12-day competition at Lauderhill that I heard about yesterday.

Adverts should be representative of traditional British families.

I would have been deported from Britain under this.

Can we take a moment to thank France? Between cool retro crime and bringing back a major villain from a few seasons ago just to throw him in prison, they're the only purveyors of fun news right now. Plus they made one of the scary technologies sound like "Cat, I farted" in their language. Good guys.

As a South Florida guy who's been watching virtually all Lauderhill matches get scheduled for the subtropical rainy season - solidarity with everybody suffering through a World Cup that's weirdly not going well during Lankan monsoon season.

"Cultural incoherence" is one of the things that makes Britain great and interesting. Ever been to a place with a great deal of cultural coherence? You'll never be so bored in your life.

Bank robber describes getting caught robbing banks as "one of the most difficult moments" in his career of bank robbery.

What? Oh, you know, not much. It's fine, everything's fine.

I just think it's nice that Audie Murphy's still dating.

Tonight in sport: Stu v European football's most notoriously hard-to-find goal.

I presume there's wanton fornication in the streets of West Bridgford by now. Or, you know, more wanton than usual.

Huzzah.

I think the thing I hate most about the term "bad light" is that it's gaslighting light. The light is not bad. All light is content-neutral. Granted, "insufficient ability to deal with perfectly normal light that's less bright than it might otherwise be" isn't as pithy, but still.

Mandelson writing to Epstein that his initial legal troubles "just could not happen in Britain" has got to be this year's True, But Maybe Not In the Way You Were Thinking winner.

This feels real because an Anglophile American would be polite enough to imply there are Worcs cricketers who aren't obscure.

If you're unfamiliar with Jared Moskowitz, he's got something of the Australian slip fielder who literally never shuts up about him, and it's fantastic.

NOTTINGHAM HAS ENTERED THE GODDAMN CHAT.

Hank Johnson here, hitting Nigel with a little Your Ground's Too Big For You.

Gotta admit, Nige has a point here. If I turn up at Heathrow and start suggesting people beat up other people in toilets, I could be in for a rough ride.

Just spitballing here, but somebody should find out if this man's home country has a national broadcaster of some sort that employs somebody who could ask him questions along these lines.

It's also got a cavalcade of Republicans being as awful as you'd expect, but Democrats on the US House Judiciary Committee are turning this into The Roast of Nigel Farage, and that is glorious.