Macca's not on menu

That the Australian selectors could not find room for Victoria's Andrew McDonald in a 17-man Ashes squad proves once and for all that the Sheffield Shield does not enter into the selectors' thinking. The batting has been bolstered with the addition of Callum Ferguson and Usman Khawaja, the fast bowling side of things has been boosted by the return of Doug Bollinger and Ryan Harris (hobbling as the latter is), and Xavier Doherty's bolter selection is a good thing to put pressure on Nathan Hauritz. But I thought that McDonald's Shield form was enough to bring him under serious consideration for the First Test.

McDonald gives Ponting the ability to keep an end tight, allowing others to attack at the other end. Plus he strengthens the batting. I thought that when McDonald began his Test career last year that the South African quicks had exposed him as someone not able to go up to the next level, but he battled hard in his last Test innings at Cape Town for a 68 that showed that he could cut it at Test level. McDonald could not get into the Ashes team in England and subsequently slid out of contention. But he is having a great Sheffield Shield season so far, starring with bat and ball, and his nagging, thoughtful line, with its clever changes of pace, would be ideal for an Australian attack that cannot afford to let the English strokemakers free their arms early. If they are spoon-fed rubbish by Johnson à la Lords 2009, they are away to a flyer and it's too late to drag it back. Hilfenhaus can do this to some extent, but Siddle and Hauritz cannot. McDonald can. Of course, we're hoping not to be in the situation where England is 0/150 before lunch on day one, but if we pick Johnson, we have to accept that possibility. Therefore McDonald should have at least made the squad.

And if the Australian attack, Johnson included, were to have England 4/75 before lunch on day one, McDonald is also a great attacking ploy, in his own under-stated way. With the bat, he is an ideal player to come in at eight or even higher: he would allow the selectors the luxury of batting Haddin at six, with himself at seven. He brings so much to the table - including some essential ingredients long since thrown out of Australia's recipe. By the way, can someone tell me the criteria on which Haddin got in ahead of Paine? Paine did absolutely nothing wrong, he kept as well as Haddin would have done and he batted just as well, and he's 25. So why is Haddin back?

Scrum diversion disguises real Poms - we bite hook, line & sinker

Wow. No-one expected that. We were expecting to see the Wallaby scrum pushed around Twickenham like a tractor pushing a Holden Barina in neutral, but what we definitely weren't expecting to see was the Wallabies being out-paced, out-skilled, out-nerved, out-invented and out-dared. England looked a different team to what Australia expected, and it wasn't just the grey jerseys. It looked as if Australia firmly believed what it had read about England relying on its scrum advantage: the fact that the English might turn up prepared to out-razzle and out-dazzle the Australians simply seemed not to have occurred to them.

The Wallabies looked slow, they looked fragile in the tackle - it is hugely disappointing that Quade Cooper, who gives them so much in attack, is now a liability in defence - and all in all, the brains trust has plenty to think about before it meets England again. That could be in a World Cup semi-final, so maybe it's a good thing that they thrashed us so badly now; and we have 11 months to work on closing that manifest gap.

Lastly, it was amazing to hear England winger Chris Ashton describe looking up at the big screen during his 14-second, 95-metre sprint - during which he averaged 20.9 kilometres per hour - and seeing where Drew Mitchell was in chasing him, and adjusting his line accordingly. I've never before heard a sport player talking about using a scoreboard screen to make real-time adjustments to his actions on the field of play. If you've got the time, as Ashton had, why not?

Kengaroos kung-hut by commuttid Kiwis

Australia's other rugby team, the Kangaroos, also had a weekend to forget, with New Zealand knocking them off with a quite marvellous late surge of there's-no-tomorrow passing, orchestrated by the brilliant Benji Marshall. The Kiwis' complete metamorphosis from rabbits-in-headlights last weekend at home to men possessed in the second half of the Four Nations decider (in Australia's Fortress Suncorp) was one of the more remarkable sporting turnarounds I've seen for a while.

If they were the Pakistan cricket team, tongues would wag. Australia was hit hard by injury, robbing the bench of its usual complement of rotations, but in fairness, the Kiwis lifted and the Australians, for all their status as league's kingpins, couldn't go with them. Another remarkable thing to come out of the match is how Billy Slater, normally so reliable in the purple of the Storm, can make some strange basic errors in a green-and-gold jersey. Even Darren Lockyer, such a consummate ball handler over his decorated career, will not want to keep the tape of the possible interception that went straight through his hands en route to New Zealand's last try. It was brave stuff from the Kiwis, and a well-deserved win.

The Australians, too, were brave in defeat - but that's not a set of words they're either used to hearing or going to welcome.

United Red Bull team in post-victory love-in. Or not

The finish to one of the best Formula One seasons in many years was a pearler, with four drivers in contention for the championship in the final race, and even through the man with the fastest car - Red Bull's Sebastian Vettel - won the title, he was pushed all the way by his rivals. Despite going into the final race 15 points behind Ferrari's Fernando Alonso, Vettel had the knowledge of his serious velocity to give him confidence and once he grabbed pole, he was going to be favourite for the title unless he made mistake: had he fallen behind, Alonso, Hamilton and Vettel's team-mate Mark Webber would have been in with a show, because the German is not as impressive coming from behind as he is when front-runner - in fact he can drive relatively poorly when frustration gets the better of him when having rivals in his windshield. But when they're in the mirror instead he is very cool, and he kept them there in Abu Dhabi.

Who outside the Red Bull team can know what went on last night amid the euphoria of victory, but it seemed clear that the team hierarchy would have preferred that Vettel salute than his Australian team-mate. But Webber certainly had his chances, and in Spain and Monaco he looked a likely world champion. Webber does have the consolation - if it is that - that he took one for the team yesterday: going in early for a tyre change induced Alonso to cover that move, which in hinsdsight was a decision that cost Ferrari the chance to win the championship. One hopes that Vettel acknowledged this sacrifice - at least, I prefer to think of it like that - in some way at the team dinner.