First Ashes Test, Cardiff, Day One

Sports - Cricket - Ashes

My picks of the first day:

With a slight advantage on their side, more smiles will be felt in the Australian dressing room today. England will be sweating for a competitive high score after they won the toss yesterday and chose to bat on the new, untried ground.

Run of Play: Advantage to...

1st session, England 97 for 3 at lunch: Australia for getting three wickets and thereby crushing England's openers.

2nd session, England 194 for 3 at tea: England with a strong partnership saving them from an embarrassing low total.

3rd session, England 336 for 7 end of day one: Australia for snatching wickets when it was most crucial, again.

Partnerships:

- 138 runs between Kevin Pietersen (69) and Paul Collingwood (64): England were 90-3 and looked rattled and shaky. Alastair Cook and Andrew Strauss never looked confident batting and were caught before reaching high scores. Ravi Bopara looked the more confident and promising. He was just getting into a stride when he was deceived by a change of pace by Mitchell Johnson, great bowling. The morning session certainly went to Australia, who got three crucial wickets and England wobbling. But KP and Collingwood pulled the match back into England's court with a great partnership after lunch, scoring comfortable runs with a couple of good strokes and boundaries.

- 86 runs between Andrew Flintoff (37) and Matt Prior (56): England lost a couple of crucial and stupid wickets and looked to collapse once again after tea. But Flintoff never lost the smile on his face after he came on, showing some beautiful and confident batting like in his heyday. Prior was more than just a backup to the former captain, also batting beautifully and confidently. They produced a clever blend of shots, boundaries and sneaky-cheeky singles. If they could have ended the day at the crease, it would have been advantage to England. But after Flintoff played the ball onto his own stumps and an unlucky inswinger through the gate meant the end of Prior, Peter Siddle put the smiles back on to the Aussies' faces. Unlucky, but certainly not unfair.

Bowlers: Mitchell Johnson, Ben Hilfenhaus and Peter Siddle shared the spoils with two wickets each. Just the one dear, but the most crucial one, went to much-criticised Nathan Hauritz, thanks to KP. Siddle's wickets came through some more English misfortune, if you want to call it that. Ricky Ponting got frustrated with Johnson at times, so, my nod goes to Hilfenhaus, who looked the most consistent in his bowling and broke the biggest and most threatening partnership between KP and Collingwood.

Ups: England's positivity in batting, never shying, everyone contributing. It was great to see Flintoff shine again, even if it was only for a bit. Hopefully they can continue that and bring that into their bowling, too.

Downs: Giving wickets away, just when you thought they had warmed up and got into a stride. England got away with a couple of mistakes, KP should have been out for lbw and was dropped shortly after, too, but the luck did not last for long.

Hero to zero: What were you thinking, KP?! A poor premeditated sweep cost you and England dearly! Bowlers wait for and thrive on idiocy and irresponsible foolishness like that.