KEY POINTS:
I was once ambushed by a baby elephant. Well, not ambushed, precisely but certainly surprised.
I was living and working in Bangkok and was busily engaged, on a hot and steamy day, on my mobile phone, taking care - as Americans put it - of business. I was so immersed in the conversation that, eyes down, I turned a corner and walked headlong into a baby elephant's behind.
Baby elephants are not totally unknown in Bangkok as their handlers take advantage of the tourist hordes to earn some baht posing for photographs and the like. I can exclusively reveal that walking into the posterior of one beyond babyhood but not yet mature is uncomfortable for both parties.
My predicament and surprised look when I bounced backwards brought much merriment to the handler and passersby. The person on the other end of the phone was well enough known to me that I could interrupt him and say: "Sorry, I've just walked into an elephant" which, I'll wager, is a line few people have delivered.
The reason for mentioning this is that I have often been reminded of a baby elephant when watching Ashley Giles, the left-arm English spinner who has been doing battle in the Ashes. Not that Ashley of the Ashes is a big or rotund man. It's more that he has the uncoordinated flurry of movement that the young of big animals often have.
Ashley's approach to the wicket reminds you of a portly, elderly gentleman who has a bad case of Montezuma's Revenge but can't bring himself to lose his dignity by breaking into a sprint for the loo.
He runs in as if clenching the buttocks, there is a tangle of arms, legs, elbows and knees and the ball somehow emerges in a pretty disciplined, if unthreatening, fashion.
It's a bit unfair on Ashley - England coach Duncan Fletcher is perhaps more to blame and more obviously comparable to a baby elephant - but the pair of them could be the reason England lose the Ashes this summer.
Fletcher has adopted a negative mindset from the outset, leaving promising left-arm spinner Monty Panesar out of his side for the first test in Brisbane (where his presence would have made little or no difference to their loss) and, criminally, from the second in Adelaide, where the pitch was slow but took some turn.
Panesar is a more attacking bowler, he turns the ball more than Giles and he has been little seen by the Australian batsmen.
Any cricket international will tell you that you win test matches through your bowlers; by taking 20 wickets. But Panesar bats like a baby elephant and fields as if his arms and legs are trunks.
Which is why, Fletcher hinted, that he went for Giles who is a useful bat and a reliable fielder. So there was irony aplenty when Giles failed with the bat in England's dismal second innings and dropped a mistimed Ricky Ponting shot when the Australian skipper was on 35. Ponting went on to make 142, his second century in two tests, and effectively took the game away from England.
A breathless Australian media are now comparing him to Bradman and he is certainly approaching such hallowed halls. Thirty-three test centuries, more than any other Australian and the fourth of all time; he will likely be the most successful batsman in cricket history.
He has that greatest asset of all batsmen at this level - time - and the technical ability to work the ball to the gaps in the field, compiling runs so silkily that it is often a shock when you realise he is on 40, as you'd swear he'd scored no more than 15. He also gives it a decent smack.
This was the Ocker Ashley dropped. It is drawing too long a bow to say that it cost England the test (though Australia would have been 76 for four chasing 551) but it is certainly a pointer to England's woefully defensive mindset.
Selecting Monty, admittedly, may not have changed things at Adelaide as he would likely have been chosen alongside Giles, instead of rather average paceman James Anderson.
But it would have been a bold move; chipping away at the mental strength of the Australians; a signal that England believed they could beat them. There is a school of thought that England were happy with a draw in Adelaide and in Perth as they felt their best chance of a victory was in Melbourne or Sydney - and they need only draw the series to retain the Ashes. That is dangerous and defeatist twaddle.
In Adelaide, they were so engrossed in defending the Ashes that they took their eye off the fact they had to win them. And walked into a baby elephant of their own.
