Pigeon flies in for bowling masterclass

England’s bowling nemesis Glenn McGrath may be retired but he’s still playing an active role in plotting the downfall of Andrew Strauss’ side. According to Siddle, Australia have worked hard on reverse swing in their warm-up games. Peter Siddle, the Australian bowler, is blogging weekly for thewisdencricketer.com throughout the Ashes.

It’ll be a pretty quiet night before the Test, my parents are over for it so I’m catching up with them for the first time over dinner, and my girlfriend is here as well. It’s always great to have your family with you – my parents came over to watch my Test debut in India when they took an emergency flight to Mohali, and this is their first time over in England.

Brett’s injury is disappointing. Be it batsman, bowler or keeper it’s never good to see one of your team-mates go down, especially on the eve of a big series like this. After watching him in Worcester where he bowled unbelievably well in preparation for this Test he looked like he was back to his prime, bowling with great pace and rhythm. Hopefully he can be fit and strong and back for the second Test.

It’s something that played a big part in 2005 so it’s something that we’ve worked on hard. England used it a lot better than us that time, but we’ve done our planning and our practice and it paid off for Brett (Lee) at Worcester.

Hopefully we can get it going here in Cardiff and throughout the series. Troy Cooley got Pigeon (Glenn McGrath) to come and talk to the seamers at Worcester for about an hour or so about fast bowling over here and wishing us luck. It’s always great to listen to someone with that sort of knowledge, and he made a little joke about us not standing on any cricket balls.

I copped a bit in South Africa, but I started to enjoy it and get used to how I’m going to get treated overseas. I’ve heard the Welsh crowds like to get a bit rowdy, so I’m looking forward to that, it should be good fun. We haven’t got any stick yet, so it will be interesting to see how long it takes people to have a good yell at us.

Courtesy: www.thewisdencricketer.com.