Oh run ye, oh run ye, to the striker's end.
Good Shane Watson was 93 not out on the Feast of Stephen when Simon Katich played Mohammad Aamer to backward point and instinctively headed off for a single. Joyful and triumphant, Watson put his head down and raced the one-tenth of a furlong down to the striker's end of the pitch. And who should be there to greet him, but Master Chef Katich, who had changed his mind and turned back.
The two batsman stood looking for all the world like a Magi short of a Wise Man, when Lo and Behold! Salman Butt bore a gift from twenty-two yards afar in the form of a cricket ball with which he broke the bails at the non-striker's end.
While umpires watched the box by day, all seated round the tube, it came upon the mid-afternoon clear that the little boy Watson would have to hang down his sweet head and return to the pavilion.
Australia 305 for 3 at stumps. It would have been a better day for Pakistan if they had fielded like shepherds watching their flocks, not like shepherds washing their socks.
Within an hour and a quarter after the close of play in Melbourne, Graeme Smith won the toss and elected to bat against England in Durban. And so it continued both day and night...