Postcards from Adelaide Oval

The Shot That Echoed Round the World: You’d have sworn Monty Panesar was preparing himself for a triumphant return to the colours. He was on the arena before play undertaking a solo fielding routine – with disarming athleticism, what’s more. Word that he had not made the XI reached our overflow eyrie at about 9.30am, when the phone of my Guardian colleague Lawrence Booth delivered itself of a text message from his fiancée in England: ‘I can’t believe they haven’t picked Monty.’ Lawrence harrumphed: ‘How come she knows and we don’t? She’s in Cambridge. And she doesn’t even like cricket.’

The Song That Echoed In My Ears: Cricket Australia may have barred Barmy bugler Billy Cooper from the Test, but what will they do about the manglings of ‘God Save The Queen’ by their chanteuse of choice Amy Pearson, who insists on wringing the Britain’s anthem for bathos, as though she’s belting out ‘The Greatest Love of All’? Heaven knows, it’s probably the B-side for her disco version of ‘Amazing Grace’. But can someone please tell her that it’s an anthem, not a torch song?

Fielder Watch: Michael Hussey hardly touched a ball in the first session, yet covered more miles than anyone, for much of the time traipsing from deep square leg to deep square leg, with a detour to convey the bowler’s cap and glasses to the umpire: a plan, perhaps, to expend some of the kid-drunk-on-red-cordial energy for which Mr Cricket is renowned.

Fielder Watch 2: Had Hussey had been at mid-off in the last over, Kevin Pietersen would have squandered his good work, and wasted much of Paul Colingwood’s. As it was, Glenn McGrath showed his age for the first time this season, and could not quite bridge the distance. On such chances of field placing can whole games hinge.

Attire of the Day: The Observer’s droll columnist Kevin Mitchell, a fine writer and one of the gentlemen of the tour, has been flaunting his Australian upbringing this summer, his guide to Aussie Rhyming Slang a tour de force of either archaeology or imagination. Today his residual Aussieness was put to the test by a SACA jobsworth who insisted that he needed a collar to enter the media area. Kevin emerged from the merchandising tent in a ‘Go Off In Green and Gold’ polo shirt, pulling it off with surprising aplomb. The expenses claim will need explaining, though.

Sign of the Day: Operating instructions in the upright urinals beneath the Favell-Dansie Indoor Cricket Centre. ‘Aim Below. Stop. Think.’ In that order. The first I can understand. The second seems superfluous. The third is the most intriguing of all. Think about what? How deeply? For how long?

‘Mate, are you finished there? I’m busting.’ - ‘I’m sorry, I’m still thinking.’

It reminded me of the sign that Mike Brearley noticed in the dressing room at the SCG, which he describes in The Ashes Retained (1979): ‘Remove clothes before using shower.’ What would be the consequences of not doing so? Brearley wondered. And why would the authority responsible for the sign care?

Hey, they didn’t even score at three runs an over. Waddya want? Cardus?