THERE was a bit of a furore during the 2006-07 Ashes tour to Australia when England accused their hosts of sending someone into their dressing room to steal their bowling plans.

This time they’ve taken the cunning precaution of having no bowling plans to steal. Or if they have, Australia’s agent will report back to HQ carrying one sheet of paper with a photograph of a cow’s arse on it and another one with a picture of a banjo.

Andrew Strauss promised there would not be any Churchillian oratory before this series. After watching England take six wickets for 674 runs off 1,103 deliveries, you can only assume he’s been playing his bowlers recordings of the shipping forecast instead.

Watching England trying to take a wicket yesterday was only a shade less comical than watching somebody try to drill through Ayers Rock with a Black and Decker.

It’s a good job we’re still the No 1 country for black humour, which is what you’d have to assume was behind England’s three fast bowlers shaking hands after watching their combined nine overs with the third new ball being spanked all over Cardiff. “Well bowled, Fred.” “You too, Jimmy.” “Great stuff, Broady.” Ye gods.

Flintoff we can probably absolve. It wasn’t until Australia passed 600 that he was overtaken as the bowler with the biggest workload, which reminds us that Strauss, like every new England captain, promised not to overbowl him. The problem is that there is often nobody else to turn to, and the only time there was a remote threat was when Freddie was on.

The bloke is flat out and full tilt whether he’s holding a bat, ball or beer, and he’ll sleep through a few more early-morning alarm clocks unless he’s used more sparingly. He even, given that his stopping distance at full speed is roughly the same as the QE2, had to vault an advertising board to save one run. Not smart for a bloke with ankle and knee problems, but he knows no other way.

So what do we do with all those predictions that England would have the edge in seam and spin in this series? Jimmy Anderson didn’t swing the first new ball at all, as the Australians had, and didn’t do much with the third, either. It may have been just a rogue ball, as there are all sorts of theories about why a ball swings (conventionally, that is), almost none of which have any scientific basis.

It’s an odd business, swing, and nobody seems to know where it comes from, and why. The ball is supposed to swing when in humid air, but doesn’t always, and when Waqar Younis and Wasim Akram were bending it round corners, someone came up with the whacky theory that it was all to do with the “different” properties in Pakistani sweat. There was also a period a few decades ago, mainly in county cricket, when bowlers put saliva produced from sucking a sweet on one side of the ball. Sounds like humbug.

Monty Panesar managed a wicket, which was one more than Graeme Swann, but neither turned the ball more than Nathan Hauritz, one of those spinners who regularly fails the Geoffrey Boycott “me mum” test. As in “calls himself a spinner? He couldn’t bowl me mum out”. So much for the theory that if one of these two attacks had sharp teeth, it was England’s. Pass the Steradent.

As for batsmen, the closest England have to Australia in putting a high price on his wicket is Paul Collingwood. You’d never guess what he did for a living if he was miming it on What’s My Line — “ a lumberjack? A coalman? The bloke from Dyno-Rod? Okay, I give up.” But when he goes to work he takes some shifting.

Then we have Kevin Pietersen. Not long after he was out, there was a TV close-up of him on the balcony practising a sweep shot, and then slapping himself on the forehead. Some took it to be a Homer Simpson-style “d’oh!”. Not a bit of it. Kev doesn’t do mea culpa, or get sleepless nights believing he might have done something daft. He was merely bemoaning his bad luck at a deflection on to his helmet.

From what we’ve seen in Cardiff so far, although allowances must be made for a pitch apparently prepared by an undertaker, we have two attacks who may not be able to bowl the other side out. However, we only have one batting side who, if the other lot are not capable of bowling them out, can actually do it for them.