England v India, third Test

You'll have noticed that we didn't do anything about the third Test yesterday. It's almost like we knew that Miriam was doing a match report for days four and five. But we didn't. We didn't know that at all. We're just lazy.

Miriam's match report:

Day four

(1) I live near the Oval and am acutely aware of the food situation so brought sandwiches from home, but was very envious of the M&S picnic of the men in front of us.

(2) I didn’t take a sweater, so was too cold for parts of the day. On the plus side, it didn’t matter that I’d forgotten sunscreen.

(3) When we got home, we watched the highlights. At one point there was a shot of RP Singh on the balcony with his bare feet on the railings and we both had the same thought: He has really, really beautiful feet, especially for a man. We wondered if he pedicures. He does obviously go to the hairdresser saying: “Just a trim, but I don’t want to lose any volume on top please”.

Day five

(1) The man next to us spilt a pint of beer - luckily not on us.

(2) We spent some time analysing the chants emanating from the noisy stand next to us. “Boring Boring England” is in itself boring, so shouldn’t be used, unless it is meant to be making an ironic point. “1 – 0 to the India” only encourages India to settle for a draw. “Barmy Army. Barmy Army” did not please us as we thought it was more for the supporters than the players. But we did like “Ian Bell, Bell, Bell, Ian Bell” (to the tune of “you can ring my bell”).

(3) We got cups of tea during the bad light break and they really hit the spot. The cups should be bigger though – the mark-up that could be charged on a larger cup of tea would surely vastly outweigh the extra cost of the cup and the negligible cost of the water.

(4) At one point all the Indian players were in a huddle except Sreesanth, who was miles away waiting in his field position. He noticed the huddle and went up to them, at which point the huddle instantly separated. I did wonder if they were all like: “Shhh, shhhh, he’s coming, quick, change the subject”.

(5) The following people gave the crowd a wave when asked: Sourav Ganguly, Sachin Tendulkar, Sreesanth, Steve Bucknor.

(6) When Zaheer Khan was announced as India’s Man of the Series, they put his name on the big screen. Only they spelt it wrong. If it were someone with an equivocal name (eg Karthick/Karthik) that’s one thing, but KHAN? It’s the easiest of the lot, people! I just hope they got it right on his cheque. Also, the variety of fonts they used on the big screen made it look like a personalised greetings card - "Congratulations ZAHEER KAHN on passing your driving test" or whatever.