Bell shows he is now a class apart

CRICKET:IT IS the bounden duty of Australia A teams to cut the Poms down to size before the big stuff starts, and just for a while mid-innings yesterday, when England got the wobbles and lost a trio of wickets for 13 runs while still a hundred or so behind the hosts, it looked as if they might manage it.

Then came Ian Bell and Paul Collingwood, who so resurrected the innings that by the time the day was done Bell, on dancing feet, had purred to a century of a sublime quality that would have earned the approval of even the most grudging of local detractors, and Collingwood, the troubleshooter (Fred Astaire and Red Adair, then), was so entrenched a stick of dynamite might not have moved him.

Their sixth-wicket partnership of 198 had taken England, at the halfway point of the match, to 335 for five, a lead of 105.

The hundreds are starting to rack up for England, with Bell’s unbeaten 125 following those made by Andrew Strauss in Perth and Adelaide and Alastair Cook, also in Adelaide. Form can be a fickle thing when pitches have any sap in them, and that for the first Test could prove a handful for batsmen: one rogue delivery can undermine all the confidence gained from time in the middle beforehand.

But these runs, along with those made by Collingwood (whose unbeaten 74 here followed 94 in Adelaide) augur well enough, given that the attack in this game in particular, on a surface offering help, contains tyros, including the distinctly brisk Mark Cameron, itching to make an impression.

But then we come to Kevin Pietersen. We really do need to talk about him. The trouble he has had against left-arm spinners, some of them of dubious pedigree, appears to have gone beyond being a problem to be sorted and descended into a neurosis.

Yesterday he had made five when he was bowled by a perfectly straight delivery from the slow left-armer Steve O’Keefe. As the fielders surrounded the happy bowler to celebrate and chortle, Pietersen held his position, stared at the pitch, and then pottered back to the dressingroom and the computer. He might be better off on a couch.

Bell, by contrast, played an innings of real aesthetic beauty. There can be no more deft batsman of quality at present. This was faultless, containing languid strokes all round the wicket.

Meanwhile, if cracks have been appearing in the Australian batting line-up of late, now they are turning up in their pitches.

There are signs that the Waca may be on the verge of regaining the pace that made it the most ferocious Test surface in the world after an earthquake-like crack running down the length of the pitch almost caused the abandonment of a second XI match between Western Australia and New South Wales.

The fault line, three to four centimetres at its widest, might not have been quite as vast as some of the cracks that unnerved batsmen a generation ago – former England captain David Gower famously was once photographed with his bat wedged so deep into a crack in a Test pitch that it stood up on its own – but it caused New South Wales to press for the match to be abandoned.

The third Ashes Test, scheduled from December 16th-20th, is due to take place two strips along from this surface, but Western Australia’s chief executive, Graeme Wood, dismissed suggestions the match might be in jeopardy.

Guardian Service

STEPHEN MORETON has been confirmed as the coach of the Ireland women's national squad after fulfilling the role on a temporary basis following the resignation of Paul Delany earlier in the season, writes Emmet Riordan.

The 26-year-old from Birmingham coached Ireland at the recent ICC Women’s Challenge and has already began preparations for next November’s World Cup qualifiers in Bangladesh.