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Saudis, booze and the Manama causeway

MANY years ago, in order to curry favour with its citizens, the Saudi Arabian government funded the building of a causeway between the kingdom and Bahrain. While many reasons were advanced to explain this generosity, the truth was known to all in the region: it was a means whereby the liquor-starved Saudis could slip across to get pissed.

Which means that these days, there will be plenty of parched throats in Saudi Arabia; it is doubtful whether any Saudis would want to risk getting caught up in the political events in Bahrain just for the sake of a drink.

Both Saudi Arabia and Bahrain are members of the Arab Gulf Co-operation Council – they hate it when the place is rightly called the Persian Gulf, with Iran being public enemy number 1 – and citizens of all six countries belonging to the council can travel freely to each others’ countries. For the Saudis it is a short drive to enjoy the taste of a cool beer – and Lord knows, in the searing heat of the Gulf region, nothing is more welcome.

Alcohol is banned in Saudi Arabia though one can find a bar in the house of every Saudi of any standing. These supplies are said to be imported in as furniture – many a royal has been summoned to the airport with the reverential advice, “Sir your furniture is leaking.” Saudi Arabia is the home of Islam, with the religion’s two holy cities, Mecca and Medina, within its borders, but the ban on booze has nothing to do with Islam although the religion does advise against the use of alcohol.

In 1953, a member of the royal family, Prince Mishari, in a drunken fit, shot and killed the British consul to the country. At that time, the British envoy to any part of the Middle East was only slightly lower in status than the Almighty so this act could not be taken lightly. King Ibn Saud offered the prince’s head as compensation and paid the required blood money to the envoy’s widow. But that was the end of booze sales in the kingdom; from that point onwards, ships were launched with a bottle of water, not champagne.

As per the law, any person caught with liquor or having consumed liquor will be either jailed or deported. A person who enjoys a drink now and then thus has to make the most of trips outside the country; a friend of mine consumed three bottles of Absolut vodka during a trip to Dubai to cover a golf tournament. He never went to the tournament, but wrote his reports after watching it on TV in an alcoholic haze. When I inquired why he was spending most of his time blotto, he replied that once he went back, it would mean another nine months of forced non-consumption until he took his annual holiday in Bombay.

In Bahrain, on the other hand, one can buy liquor in the bigger supermarkets. There are plenty of hotels built close to the causeway and it is very convenient for the Saudis and other visitors who arrive with the express purpose of getting tanked.

Thus, the Saudis will be watching the situation in Bahrain with the greatest interest. Not because they fear that the riots may spread to their own country, but more because they fear that they may not be able to quench their thirst at short notice if the little island falls under the control of radical elements.

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Mubarak falls – and ABC News 24 stands exposed again

AT ABOUT 3am AEST (+11 hours GMT) on Saturday, February 13, the reign of Egytptian dictator Mohammed Hosni Mubarak came to an end. Thirteen hours later, the Australian 24-hour news channel, ABC News 24, was still struggling to cope with the developments.

Every 24-hour news channel of any repute had round-the-clock coverage of the historic events in Egypt as they unfolded; right until early Sunday (February 13) morning, the majority of the time was spent on discussing the fallout from the 18 days of protests, something unheard of in the Middle East.

The last time there was a simliar earthquake in Egypt was back in 1952 when one Gamal Abdel Nasser and his group of Free Officers overthrew the monarchy. Then, as this time, the older members of the armed forces backed the status quo; Nasser was supported by the younger elements.

But that isn’t what this post is about. ABC News 24 has struggled on many occasions – when then Australian prime minister Kevin Rudd was toppled in 2010 by his own party, the network was caught with its pants down. Sky News and the Nine network were much quicker off the blocks. This time, was even more embarrassing.

I switched on the network at midday; the fare available was a repeat of some anodyne programme shown on the analog channel, ABC1. At this time the BBC World Service was running hot with stories from Cairo, Alexandria, and other Egyptian cities. On ABC News 24, it was a normal dreary Saturday.

I then had a look at the 4pm bulletin. It was tragic. The ABC correspondent in Cairo had gone AWOL – or so it seemed. The news was led with a story from Al Jazeera – yes, the hated Al Jazeera, the network that has often been linked to Osama bin Laden by the prima donnas in the West, the network whose office was shut down by the Egyptian authorities, the network that has caused more convulsions in the Arab world in its short lifespan than the ABC has caused anywhere, even Australia, in more than 80 years of existence.

The second story was from the BBC – and this was not even acknowledged. Unless one was aware of the fact that the reporter is a longtime BBC hand, one would never have known. The ABC’s contribution mirrored the cultural cringe that seems to afflict the whole of Australia – it was a report about US president Barack Obama’s reaction. Funny, one could get video footage from Washington, but not from Cairo where seismic events were taking place. Priorities, priorities.

And then, after a clip from the analog service, showing a demonstration by Egyptians in Sydney, there was a most curious interview conducted by ABC employee Jane Hutcheon with Lydia Khalil, an Egyptian woman from a think-tank. Khalil is obviously an American-Egyptan; your chances of getting on the ABC are better if you have a Western accent. The curious part of the interview came when Hutcheon asked “can you imagine what it will be like in cities like Alexandria?” This, when the BBC had reported four hours earlier exactly what has happening in that Egyptian city. Tells one a lot about Hutcheon’s news sense, and the reaction time of the network as a whole.

As I’ve said before, ABC News 24 has been set up to satisfy the ego of managing director, Mark Scott. Its resources are insufficient and when one really needs a 24-hour network – when a major story breaks – it is found wanting. It may be better to deploy those resources locally, shut down the network – and avoid repeating programmes so often.

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Banks: people love to hate them

THERE are four big banks in Australia – Commonwealth, Westpac, National Australia and ANZ – which bitch right through the year about the rising costs of operating and then report stunning profits. It is the same year after year, no matter if there is a global meltdown or not.

The banks put it down to skillful management. I put it down to gouging.

Given the manner in which these banks rort customers by imposing fees for anything and everything, they are understandably not the most popular businesses in town. But I often wonder why the people do not react by taking their business elsewhere.

It is not as though these four banks are the only ones in town. There are plenty of other, smaller players who offer better terms and conditions, charge half as much or even less, and do not treat their customers as cash cows. One has to exercise one’s choice and switch banks.

This is easier said than done. When one has regular payments being debited to one’s bank account, it is difficult to pick the right time to switch. A single payment cannot be missed and the more such direct debits one has, the more difficult moving from one bank to another becomes.

My personal experience is that it is possible to move, once the move is carefully planned. All one needs is a good reason to move – minor irritants are often not enough to motivate one to take the trouble to organise a move.

The first time I moved, it was from the ANZ to Westpac. I opened an account with ANZ as soon as I landed in Australia simply because it was the one name with which I was familiar. ANZ used to operate in India, Sri Lanka and the United Arab Emirates under the name Grindlays.

I stayed with them less than a year. The day I opened my account, I was asked for my tax file number. I didn’t have one at the time. Later when I obtained one, I did not bother to give it to the bank. The bank did not ask me for it either.

But one day I found that 92 dollars had been deducted from my account; on calling the bank I was told that it was because I had not given them by tax file number. On asking why they had not requested it, I was told ” it is not our role to remind you of government policy.”

That was enough for me. Two days later I closed the account and took my business to Westpac – once again convenience played a role, it was the one bank closes to my home. I overlooked the fact that I paying 20 dollars or a little more every month as fees and charges as the bank had combined my savings and cheque accounts in one. This was the advice they gave me – it was geared towards making money for them, not saving me from paying these charges every month. I even overlooked the fact that on one occasion when I went to make a withdrawal dressed in track pants, the bank asked me for identification; I had gone there in a suit the previous day and not been asked to identify myself.

The years went by and the number of direct debits grew. But again there was a seminal event which jolted me out of my complacency. In the year 2000, I asked the bank for a car loan and it was sanctioned over the phone. I was asked to come and pick up a cheque for the amount on a designated day in the year 2000. The amount was small, just $13,000. The interest rate was around nine percent.

When I went to the bank, they gave me some papers to sign and I noticed that the interest rate was considerably more; I then noticed that the money was being advanced as a personal loan. When I inquired why, I was told that one had to borrow a minimum of $20,000 for a car loan; lesser amounts were issued as personal loans. This was not what i had been told when I negotiated the loan on the phone. I had not asked the phone banking person for her name; when I was asked who had sanctioned the loan, I had no reply.

Given that I had committed to pick up the car that day, I had no choice but to take the loan on the terms that Westpac tricked me into accepting.

That ripoff was what made me move to a smaller bank. I paid off the loan, cursing Westpac every time I had to go to the bank. I planned the move carefully so that no direct debits would be missed and took my business to Bendigo Bank. The process was painful but I was determined to move. I got the right advice about accounts – keep a cheque account and a savings account separate.

Since then, rarely have I paid the bank any charges. The online service works well and the bank serves my needs. But I’m in this position because I was prepared to make the effort to move.

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Beating up on multiculturalism

TO ANY politician, people equate to votes. A particular community equates to a vote-bank. When it’s convenient to humour that community – i.e. when one needs their votes – the politician will speak good of them. If sucking up to another community will bring in more votes – doesn’t matter if it alienates the first community – the politician will take that route.

Multiculturalism is a popular political football. When politicians start talking it up or down it’s generally because they have spotted a potential vote-bank and want to try and consolidate their position
before the next poll comes around.

British prime minister David Cameron’s outburst about multiculturalism – at a time when the English Defence League was scheduled to hold a big rally – is nothing new. I’ve heard similar sentiments from former Australian prime minister John Howard, comments that contributed greatly to the Cronulla riots. Howard had form in this regard – he won an election in 1998 on the back of discrimination against Aborigines and a second one in 2001 by villifying Afghan asylum-seekers.

Others in the Liberal ranks, like Kevin Andrews, a former immigration minister, have also weighed in, drawing succour from Cameron. This Andrews is the same man who condemned an Indian doctor, Mohammed Haneef, to time in jail and trashed his reputation in the search for votes back in the run-up to the 2007 Australian national election.

This kind of beat-up often happens when economic conditions are bad – one can always blame the foreigners for it. And the UK isn’t in the best of economic health at the moment.

In the UK, within a few years, white people will be in the minority. If the experiment of bringing in migrants and making them part of British society has failed, then society and the government have to bear most of the blame.

A great deal of British policy on migration has been created in order to expiate guilt over its colonial rapaciousness. British guilt over the division of the Indian subcontinent is a classic example. No policy created because of such reasons will ever succeed. No politician has ever bothered to think about the settlement of people in such a way that ethnic ghettos will not be created. As the saying goes, birds of a feather…

Of course, one cannot dictate to people where they should live, unless one is living in a country like Singapore. But there can be more interaction to ensure that the kind of enclaves that one finds in places like Bradford in England are not created.

When ethnic people feel alienated from the mainstream, they tend to band together. This sense of alienation can be imagined or it can be real. Discrimination in the workplace, in public and the media – very subtle stuff at most times, things you can;t really pin down – tends to push people together with others of their kind and create a siege mentality. But when the government is only interested in is votes, these things do not weigh heavily on its collective mind.

There are cases when people in some areas realise the problems that are building up and move to make things better. Box Hill in Melbourne was a dangerous place to visit after dark; there were needles aplenty in the car parks some 10 years ago. But things have changed after local officials took steps to clean up the suburb. The population mix is still the same. But things are now very different because the community decided that it had to act and clean up the suburb for the good of its own children.

Politicians are unlikely to change their methods. People in various areas should act to ensure that newcomers get settled in and contribute to society. Making them feel they are outsiders greatly increases the possibility that the newcomers will turn against the very people whom they live amongst.

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Melbourne can learn from Brisbane’s bus system

MELBOURNE prides itself on many things. But when it comes to transport, it has to take second place to the much smaller and less-populated Brisbane. That city has a bus service that should be emulated.

No doubt, Melbourne is trying to put something in place. But its most recent effort, the myki, has turned out to be an expensive disaster. An inquiry is underway to decide whether the system should be scrapped or extended to the rest of the state. It is already over budget by about 200 percent with well in excess of a billion dollars having been spent.

The Brisbane system works, and works well. One only has to place one’s go card next to the reader when one is boarding and leaving the bus and it registers immediately with a moderately loud beep so that the driver knows the passenger isn’t cheating. If the card has insufficient funds, the beep sounds different.

There are two swipe points near the driver so people can get off the bus without delay, even at peak times. Touching the card to the reader does not delay people at all.

In sharp contrast, one has to hold a myki close to a reader for at least 5 seconds before it registers. And it does so with such a weak noise, that hardly anyone, except the passenger, knows it has registered. The same process happens when one leaves the bus.

If everyone in the bus was using the myki, it would delay those leaving the vehicle quite a bit, not something that would be welcome on a working day. One needs to remember that Melbourne has about four times the number of people that Brisbane does.

The myki also has its quirks. I normally pay $4.96 for a trip to the city – but if I do not close the trip the same day, the next time I touch on, I am charged only 2.02 for the journey. I found this out by accident when I forgot to touch off while leaving the bus one evening.

And on days when the trip to the city from the suburb where I live is different – the route is split into two on the weekends, the first bus taking one to the next suburb and a second bus taking one from there to the city – I get charged $2.02 for the first bit and 98 cents for the second part. Puzzling indeed.

The Brisbane system seems to be similar to London’s Oyster card. If you register the card, then you are asking for trouble because your movements are tracked. But an unregistered card does not open you to being tracked as you.

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Sexism reigns in AFL commentary box

FOR all the talk about the number of women involved in Australain rules football, better known as AFL, there are fresh indications that, like many other things in the country, it is run by, and meant for, middle-aged and old white Australian males.

The latest indication of this comes in the dumping of commentator Kelli Underwood by Channel 10, one of the two free-to-air channels which won the right to broadcast the game in the last bidding contest for TV rights.

Underwood was given a two-year trial and has now been relegated to doing the job of boundary rider; an all-male team will call the games for this season and, conceivably, for the foreseeable future.

The decision smacks of sexism. It was made after a local tabloid, the Herald Sun, published the results of an online survey that ranked AFL commentators according to the annoyance factor. That anyone could take an online poll seriously is surprising; further the Sun’s readers cannot be exactly said to be at the high end of the IQ spectrum.

My rating of Underwood comes from nearly 43 years of listening to sport on radio and watching various kinds of sport on TV. Among the many commentators I have listened to are Bob Harvey (Sri Lankan – rugby union), Dicky Rutnagur (Indian – cricket), Alan McGilvray, Jim Maxwell, Glen Mitchell (Australian – cricket), John Arlott, Brian Johnston, Don Mosey, Christopher Martin-Jenkins (all British – cricket), Tony Cozier, Reds Perera, Fazeer Mohammed (West Indies – cricket), Dennis Commetti, Gerard Whatley, Drew Morphett, Mark McClure, Stan Alves, Rex Hunt, Anthony Hudson, Sam Newman (Australia – AFL), and many more whose names do not come to mind immediately.

Underwood is no better and no worse than any male commentator employed by a TV channel or a radio station; in fact, several of the men who commentate on the game are much worse than her. She has the right approach to communicating the state of the game, and never allows herself to go overboard. Instead, in the manner of top commentators like Brian Glanville, she builds up the excitement, never indulging in the kind of yelling and verbal diarrhoea that many of the men do.

Hudson, one of the Channel 10 commentators, should not be allowed anywhere near a commentary box. His delivery is poor, he gets excited all the time and screams, and for him every goal is “unbelievable.” But he has the characteristics which Underwood lacks – he is white, middle-aged and male.

This isn’t the first time that a woman has ventured near the commentary box of a predominantly male sport: in 1983, actress Kate Fitzpatrick joined the cricket commentary team of Channel 9. She did not last long, only until the end of that season. There are other women like Rebecca Wilson (who lasted one episode of the National Rugby League’s footy show) and Caroline Wilson, who appears on Channel 9’s Footy Classified and has done so for some time.

The commentators of today indulge in a lot of hyperbole, in the belief that they have to jazz up the game that they are covering. They use tired, worn phrases all the time and try to outdo each other in the use of superlatives. For the most part these days, I turn off the sound if I watch an AFL game.

Australians are willing to endure Bruce MacAvaney (who when describing young Hawthorn footballer Cyril Rioli gushed “what a delicious young player he is), Hudson (who shoots off at the mouth all the time), and Hunt (who is prone to the occasional racist gibe and whose commentary is mostly understood by an audience of one – himself).

At a time when even a country like Pakistan has put a competent woman in the commentary box – sadly, after the attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team in 2009, she has not been able to commentate because international cricket matches are not being staged in the country – it seems absurd that a country like Australia, which claims to be oh-so-progressive, cannot do as much.

But then, on reflection, why am I surprised? Graphic evidence of the sexism in the country was provided when elections were held last year. One shouldn’t be surprised that a smaller subset of the population expresses the same sentiment.

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Gulf sheikhs must be shaking in their thobes

IN THE space of a week, Egypt has gone from tourist mecca to a place that people avoid. It has gone from a police state to one where the dictator who has ruled for nearly 30 years is shaking in his shoes. There is talk of an uprising in Yemen too – the West is less interested in what goes on there than in Cairo so we won’t be seeing too many headlines about Sana’a.

But Egypt’s case is interesting, to say the least. The last time there was anything like this it was in the years following the assassination of Anwar Sadat by the Muslim Brotherhood. Their expectations were belied – they hoped that the people would support them in the chaos that followed the slaying of Sadat in revenge for his having signed the Camp David peace deal with Menachem Begin.

But the people preferred the iron arm of the dictator as long as stability was restored in the country and the Muslim Brotherhood was given a working over; 302 of them were tried and though some were acquitted, many met their fate by firing squad. Their leaders were tortured and Ayman al-Zawahiri, one of the key men, fled the country in 1985 when Mubarak began to hunt out those who were part of the Brotherhood.

Zawahiri fled to Afghanistan and we know whom he tied up with; he became the spiritual mentor of one Osama bin Laden, the man who is better known worldwide than even Julian Assange. (Adam Curtis has some brilliant footage of a young Zawahiri in court as part of his documentary, The Power of Nightmares).

In Algeria, similarly, the Islamic Salvation Front indulged in a grisly campaign of murder and intimidation in the early 90s after they had made a decent showing in the elections and then been frozen out by the ruling party, hoping that the people would rise up and join them. Once again, the desire for stability – no matter the kind of political system that would bring it about – won and the Islamists have never been a force there since then. There is a school of Islamic thought that holds that in times of anarchy, the rule of a dictator is to be preferred to no rule; that’s one of the reasons why there are so many dictatorships in the Muslim world.

Given this background, it is important that the Islamists do not try to capitalise on the situation in Egypt, even though the sight of Mubarak quaking in his shoes must be a source of much amusement and delight to them. It appears that they are now supporting an army takeover as long as Mubarak is exiled. There are plenty of Islamists in the armed forces as can be gauged from the killing of Sadat, hence this preference.

But the most interesting fallout could be in the Gulf states, those tiny empires of sand which have financed people like Mubarak for years and years. Propped up by the Americans, the Gulf sheikhs – in the UAE, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the Sultanate of Oman, Kuwait and Bahrain – have been living it up in style and mollifying their citizenry with handouts to keep them in a comatose state. As long as the oil price is kept at levels that the Americans can manage to buy, the sheikhs have known that they are safe.

Saudi Arabia has a sizeable number who subscribe to the Islamic model of a state; as long back as 1979, the Islamists tried to take power by seizing the Grand Mosque in Mecca. Bin Laden enjoys considerable popularity in the country and he must be overjoyed to see those who exiled him and stripped him of his citizenship in this situation. Saudi ruler, King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz is much more popular than the former ruler, Fahd, but the armed forces cannot control the country if something erupts. American assistance will be needed as it was in 1979 though the whole thing became farce when the US helicopter flying to the aid of the then king, Khalid, crashed in the desert. It will be more bloody and violent if trouble breaks out – the Saudi method of keeping something quiet is by extermination.

Of the six Gulf states, only Qatar has reason to feel somewhat confident that there will be no trouble. The head of the country, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, has brought in some reforms, given women more right and also helped the birth of Al Jazeera which surely must take some credit for all the protests. The other Gulf states will be very nervous, especially Oman, where Sultan Qaboos has ruled for nearly 40 years without a change in sight.

But leave all this aside – the most nervous of all countries will be the US of A which has troops in many of the states and gets most of its oil from the region. If trouble does break out, the rulers will call on the US for help to stay in power and given that oil is part of the equation, the Americans will have no choice but to agree.

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Ashes to Ashes: Australia left in the dust

AT LEAST one Australia could have been happy after the catastrophic defeat in the fifth and final Ashes Test – but even that didn’t happen.

Ricky Ponting, forced to stand down due to an injury, would have been happy that the team had not done better under Michael Clarke than under him – but then any happiness would have been washed away when the chairman of selectors, Andrew Hilditch, refused to say whether Ponting would be captain again when Australia resumes Test cricket in August.

Poor Ponting will have to keep biting his nails and spitting on his hands and rubbing them together for the next seven or eight months.

At the end of a series in which Australia was humiliated, becoming only the second team to lose three Tests by an innings at home, Hilditch said he had done a good job. You’d have to wonder what would have happened had he done a bad job.

Maybe if Australia had lost all five Tests, Hilditch would have been a mite more modest and said that he had done an average job. One never knows with such an unassuming gentleman.

The coach, Tim Nielsen, backed players like Phillip Hughes (who lacks even the semblance of technique and insists ‘but that’s how I play”). Steven Smith (who spent the last morning of the series making cow-shots against England) and Michael Beer Australia’s future looks bright, especially given that Nielsen has had his contract renewed until 2013.

Nielsen still said he had done all he could, but did not specify whether it was all he could to destroy the team or to make them able to win Test matches.

The selectors, who have been clearly unmasked as a bunch of jokers, also said they had done a good job. Australia needs a couple more series like this and it could well end up in a battle for ninth place in the ICC rankings with Bangladesh.

Three innings victories in a Test series down the years:

1928 – England 3 home innings wins in a row v West Indies
1931 – Australia 3 home innings wins in a row v West Indies
1931 – Australia 3 home innings wins in 5 tests v South Africa
1936 – Australia 3 away innings wins in 5 tests v South Africa
1947-8 – Australia 3 home innings wins in 4 tests v India
1957 – England 3 home innings wins in a row v West Indies
1958 – England 3 home innings wins in 5 tests v New Zealand
1959 – England 3 home innings wins in 5 tests v India
1994 – India 3 home innings wins in a row v Sri Lanka
2007 – Sri Lanka 3 home innings wins in a row v Bangladesh
2010-11 – England 3 away innings wins in 5 tests v Australia

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Final Ashes Test: Ponting’s mixed feelings

RICKY Ponting faces five very difficult days ahead. Days when he will be torn between wanting Australia to do well in the final Ashes Test and also fully aware that any improvement will be put down to the stand-in captain Michael Clarke.

And any improvement will also decrease even the smallest chance he has of regaining the captaincy when Australia next plays Test cricket in August. Thus in a perverse way, Ponting will probably be happy if Australia suffers another defeat.

Would Ponting play under someone else as captain? He really wouldn’t have a choice – if the selection panel decides that a new captain must take over, then he will have no choice. And the new captain wouldn’t have much choice to having Ponting in his team if he merits a place on form.

Ponting is anxious about the captaincy and also highly insecure. This is evident from the fact that he wants to be in the dressing room for the fifth Test even though he is not playing. He wants to be around so that he can claim some credit in the event that the team fares better than it did in Melbourne.

Clarke must be feeling as though he has a millstone around his neck. It is highly unusual for a situation like this to develop but both the selectors and Clarke are being diplomatic about it. Nobody wants to make it appear as though Ponting has played his last Test as captain.

But that is what is very likely to happen. Ponting has some years left as a batsman but the team needs some rejuvenation and the long gap between Tests is exactly what is needed to blood new players.

The selectors have to look seriously at trying to regain the country’s ranking in Test cricket – it now stands fourth, thanks the weather in Sri Lanka that caused both Tests in the two-Test series between the West Indies and Sri Lanka to end in draws. Lanka thus slipped back from fourth to fifth and Australia moved up a notch.

It is always a touch tragic to see a good batsman come to a fork in the road as Ponting has. He is desperate to hang on to the captaincy and does not see that his time as captain is up. If he were to step down voluntarily it would be good for him. He could then continue as a player as long as his form warrants.

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From good to bad in the space of a week

AUSTRALIA’S national cricket team seems to swing from bad to good to bad in the space of a few weeks or sometimes even a week. The team was thrashed in the second Test of the ongoing Ashes series, bounced back to win the third by 267 runs, and today, the first day of the fourth Test, was bowled out for 98.

Yes 98, the lowest score at the MCG for an Ashes Test. Australia was bowled out for 83 by India in 1981 at the MCG and has been dismissed for scores below 120 in home Tests four times since 1990.

At the close of play, England is 59 runs ahead with all its wickets intact. A miracle is required for Australia not to lose this Test and with only sporadic showers forecast for one remaining day of the Test, even the weather can be counted out as a saviour.

But why do these dramatic swings of fortune take place? In Perth, Mitchell Johnson bowled very well, aided by a pitch that was helpful to fast bowlers. The scores were not high – the highest innings total was 309 by Australia in its second innings. England made one run more than this in both its innings combined.

Johnson managed to produce quite dramatic late swing which brought him a number of wickets; he took nine in all for the match. Elated by his success, this was put down to changes in his action. Nobody factored in the easterly wind that blows in Perth and tends to make the ball swing. Nobody also thought about the fact that Perth is an open ground, allowing the wind to sweep over it, not a cauldron like the MCG, venue for the fourth Test, where the imposing structure prevents any wind from sweeping through.

Everyone expected Johnson to repeat his heroics. A little less was expected from the other hero of Perth, Ryan Harris, who also took nine wickets, though a number of them came after England had thrown in the towel in its second innings and had resigned itself to defeat.

Neither bowler has been able to do a thing on the MCG track. And when you have only 98 to defend, you need wickets fast to put pressure on the opposition. Skipper Ricky Ponting, who is likely to lose the captaincy if the series is lost, gave Johnson three overs but saw the paceman leak 17 runs. As the England batsmen kept scoring steadily, Ponting fell back on the more economical bowlers.

Whenever Australia is caught on a wicket where the opposition can make the ball move sideways, its batsmen stand exposed. They do not know which ball to leave and which to hit. They dab at balls that can be well left alone; only Mike Hussey seems to know where his stumps are. But today, Hussey also failed; by the law of averages he was due a low score, having scored more than 500 runs in the series to date.

One of Australia’s openers lacks technique (Phillip Hughes) and the other is a makeshift opener (Shane Watson) who would be much more comfortable batting at six. Ponting is no longer the best batsman in the side and therefore should not be at one-drop. But his deputy, Michael Clarke, cannot handle the pressure of the one-drop and hence bats at four.

After the success of Perth, Australia chose to go into the MCG Test with four pacemen, the first time in decades that the country has played without a regular spinner at this ground. It appears that Ponting was ready to insert the opposition if he won the toss and had picked four pacemen for that reason. Given that one only has a 50 percent chance of winning a toss, it looks as though the Australian captain had left his brains at home.

Even if Australia manages to pull the chestnuts out of the fire in this Test and go to the final Sydney Test level at 1-1, it is unlikely to win the series. As the holders of the Ashes, England only needs to draw the series in order to carry that precious little urn back home again. The prospect of rain affecting the game in Sydney is very high, given the existing weather patterns.