DRS has the final say

DRS has the final say at Trent Bridge

If there's one psychological weapon England lost at Trent Bridge, it was the sense of inevitability. When a team has a recent history of winning, the first thing it wants to do is implant, in the opponent, an old "Here we go again" feeling. Australia was excellent at doing this in its years of dominance, and it carries across all sports. Queensland have it in State of Origin. Andre Agassi said that when he had a rival feeling this way, the end of the match had a magnetic pull.
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England was desperate to re-impose that feeling. It arose on Thursday morning when Australia was 9/117 after losing five wickets in a rush. The Phil Hughes-Ashton Agar partnership retrieved the immediate situation, and also chased the demons away. The collapse and the result, had looked familiar; but all of a sudden, it was "Here we don't go again".

There was a possibility of it returning again on Friday morning,New and used commercial parking guidance system sales, rentals, and service. when Kevin Pietersen went on the attack and Alastair Cook was inside-edging his way to eternity. It reared up again on that tumultuous Friday afternoon, when not only the good batting of Ian Bell and Stuart Broad but the umpires' errors threatened to be instil a sense of doom among the Australians.

On both occasions, Australia's disciplined and persistent bowling pulled the situation back from the brink. There would be no England second innings 600 in this game.

The next wave came during Australia's run chase after tea on Saturday, when the wickets of Michael Clarke, Steve Smith and Hughes fell in a 17-ball period. The gloating and smirking returned to the English former captains' commentary club; Ah, yes, old bean, this was always going to happen.

But again Australia repelled it. After such crushing defeats in Melbourne and Sydney in 2010-11, the sense of helplessness was the first opponent Australia had to conquer here. Brad Haddin and Ashton Agar did it nervously on Saturday evening, but they did it.

"Never, ever give up,: was what Glenn McGrath said to Agar when he gave him his cap on Wednesday morning, about five years ago. It sounds so simple, except for the fact that teams give up all the time. They see the writing on the wall. They get a sense of impending doom. They fall victim to unseen forces, swept along. They don't want to give up, but something inside them melts.

This Australian team saw the writing on the wall too, but they didn't read it. When Agar was out after nearly an hour's resistance on Sunday morning, that was the end of the fairytale. But Haddin doesn't do fairytales. When Mitchell Starc nicked Jimmy Anderson, it could have seemed that Jimmy was on another of his irresistible bursts. But Peter Siddle came out and struck the ball as positively as any batsman. Then Siddle nicked Anderson, and Cook dropped the catch to his left. Was the writing on the wall in the other dressing room? No  Siddle flashed again, and Cook took it leaping to his right.

That seemed to be that. Last man in, 80 to win. But what's a last-wicket partnership now? James Pattinson walked out knowing he and Haddin only had to do half as well as Australia's previous last-innings pair. Eighty runs for the last wicket isn't that many, when 163 is the new normal. And Pattinson, like Agar in the first innings, is only number eleven because this team has four number eights, and someone has to go last.

So there they went. Here we go again  not. Anderson eventually had to take a rest, after 13 straight overs, and Haddin clubbed Steve Finn three times over wide mid-on. Pattinson joined in, clouting Finn to, and Graeme Swann over, the boundary. When Haddin lofted a sweep over square-leg, perhaps it was Finn, the discarded bowler, who was feeling a sense of inevitability. Players who are having bad matches tend not to want catches to come to them, and Finn dived bravely but unsuccessfully.

And then  lunch, why not? England started to look like they had 20 runs to lose, not one wicket to win. Broad pulled off his shoe to try to stop the lunch break. The umpires were having none of it, and forced Swann to bowl another over. Commonsense had to rear its head sooner or later. But England's stalling tactic was telling. Why should they be the ones to want to stop playing, when one ball could win it? Only because they'd been stripped of the psychological edge they had in January 2011, which was Australia feeling beaten before they had taken the field.

After a lunch when all players were more likely to be found queuing up at the toilet than the buffet, Anderson, the iron man, came back. Pattinson nearly chopped his second ball onto his stumps. The English crowd were singing their "Jimmy Jimmy" song. But for which Jimmy?

Anderson, ultimately. The best player in the match took his 10th wicket with his 10th ball after lunch. Cook, whose use of the DRS has been exemplary, appealed a not-out decision against Haddin. The final say rested with Marais Erasmus and his HD television. That, it seems, was inevitable.

Gone are the heady days of "Boys vs. Girls , where contestants half-heartedly asserted their gender's superiority through a series of painful stereotypes. Gone too are world-record pace one-liners of  Heaven and Hell week, the folksy charm of the nonnas of  Italian Week , and the underrepresentation of kids in  Kids' Week .

No, this is  Fast Food week, a week that has been dreaded in MasterChef lore since the start of this episode, when we first became aware it existed.The contestants are still reeling from the loss of Liliana, a lady who cooked pasta every single challenge until she was asked to make a dish that represented herself, and she then made a cake.

Her leaving the MasterChef house has shaken the contestants to their very core.  Nobody is safe , they tell us, although without knowing more about Liliana's propensity to violence it is unclear as to whether they are scared for themselves within the competition or for us, now that she's on the outside.

Entering the MasterChef kitchen, the benches are lined with Mystery Boxes, which when lifted reveal empty fast food packaging. Having already eaten all of the hamburgers that were meant to be in the boxes, the judges think quickly and invent another challenge  the contestants must now cook a new twist on a hamburger, fried chicken and a souvlaki.

The contestants are split into teams of three, and they must complete the challenge in the time it takes Matt Preston to travel around Melbourne to buy those items and return to the MasterChef kitchen. This obviously isn't the first time Matt has driven around Melbourne buying fast food, but as an added degree of difficulty, in this challenge he will be doing it in daylight and while sober.

Time starts and Vern takes to the challenge like a man who is no stranger to a regrettable kebab. He's making a  50/50 burger featuring a patty containing half beef and half minced bacon. The judges immediately forego the remainder of the cooking and judging process and declare Vern the winner of both this challenge and their hearts.Jules is making a Thai fish burger but is using rice instead of buns, proving that just because you can do something doesn't mean you actually should.

Christina wants to bring some of her Portuguese heritage to bear in this challenge, but she is exasperated by the stereotype of Portuguese food being all about chicken. This is a stereotype she intends to challenge today by making Portuguese-style chicken.Lucy is making macadamia-crusted fried chicken with aioli, continuing a troubling trend of people calling things 'aioli' when they really just mean 'fancy mayonnaise', and Emma is spending a lot of time making chips, for no apparent reason.

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