I said to K this morning that I still couldn't quite believe we'd won the Ashes. You didn't, she said, they're still playing in hell. I refrained from saying that that was exactly where we seemed to be playing Australia in the 1990s. Yesterday I put all of my newspaper clippings in a scrapbook with, to borrow from Gideon Haigh, all the concentration of a small boy over a complicated jigsaw. It was an amazing summer. Three things I will remember especially: (a) Harmison's ball to dismiss Clarke at Edgbaston; (b) Strauss' catch off Gilchrist at Trent Bridge and (c) see below. 

A marvellous article from the LRB comparing the fortunes of the superpowers, cricketing and otherwise, is here. Possibly the only article which draws the comparison between Kim Hughes and Jimmy Carter, but none the less entertaining for it.