The friend in whose spare room I am camping during this Test, Arun, manages a portfolio of local rental flats, which in this Test match week, also graduation week at Cardiff’s university, are in heavy demand. Yesterday he had a call seeking digs from an Australian who had just arrived with a family of five. There must be places to stay, mustn’t there? They weren’t that interested in cricket in Wales, were they? Such was the Aussie’s genial guilelessness that Arun almost forgot he had just had a cancellation. Result: optimism rewarded.

Australia’s selection for this Cardiff Test has a tang of optimism to it too, backing four bowlers with no prior English experience to bowl England out twice – a vestige of the days when raw meat and a baggy green were the only preparation an Aussie needed for sticking it to the Poms. There was a pleasing vernacular quality to the pace attack: plumber’s mate (Johnson), bricklayer (Hilfenhaus) and woodchopper (Siddle), destined inevitably for tradesmanlike performances, ahead of the banker (Clark), doubtless to Alistair Darling’s satisfaction. Hauritz played because if he hadn’t he might as well have packed for home, but in all it was right choice: the one cause for Australian concern is what can be inferred about Clark, who with a rumour of form would have been among the first picked.

Optimism was here rewarded too. At every point in the day when Ricky Ponting must have ached for a wicket, his bowlers broke through, in the cases of Cook, Collingwood and Flintoff against the run of play, and in the case of Pietersen against the flow of logic. Has any batsman of quality found such eccentric methods of dismissal as Pietersen? What might have been endearing, furthermore, is now a genuine handicap to his progress. Great batsmen at their best leave bowlers without hope; Pietersen always gives his opponents a whiff, and the reputation diminishes him. Times have changed since Mike Gatting entered the annals of ignominy against Australia twenty-two years ago for a reverse sweep when such a stroke was tantamount to lese majeste. Had Gatting played Pietersen’s stroke and vice versa, Pietersen might still be in, and Gatting wearing an ermine robe in the House of Lord’s rather than drinking for his country in the ECB hospitality marquee.

A few more sessions like the last, chockfull of strokes and wickets, and this series might begin standing on its own feet rather than being, as it sometimes seems on Sky, a flimsy pretext for interspersing highlights of 2005. Ponting, having been rewarded for his faith in Hauritz with Pietersen’s wicket, somewhat belatedly went back to Hilfenhaus, the most consistent of his pacemen, who will bowl worse for better figures than today. Three quicks plus Hauritz might not be enough for Australia some days this summer, but the individuals concerned will run in hopefully all day – and that is a quality bound to be rewarded.