Part of my Christmas ritual (and probably yours too) is staying up to watch the first session of the Boxing Day test from the MCG. It used to be a dispiriting experience fifteen years ago. A succession of worthy challengers (some of which contained great bowlers like Ambrose, Walsh and Waqar Younis) would turn up with high hopes, but concede four hundred runs in a day and lose by an innings. How on earth was England’s attack (which at this point was led by Alan Mullally) going to take a single...
Is that all you’ve got?
Australia 251-7 (50 overs) England 252-4 (45.4 overs) I can’t remember a time when England have beaten Australia so easily in an ODI. If Lord’s was a canter, the Oval was a cakewalk. The Aussies’ total of 251 was never going to be enough on a fast scoring ground with a good pitch. Sky reckoned it was about thirty runs short. One hundred and thirty would’ve been more accurate. The Aussie innings never really got going. Ideal ODI batting efforts usually start briskly in the initial powerplay...
Australian cricket’s darkest hour?
Australia 284 & 47. South Africa 96 & 236-2. Cricket Boks win by 8 wickets Words cannot describe the Aussies’ defeat in the first test to South Africa. Believe me, I’ve tried. Michael Clarke used ‘diabolical’ and ‘horrendous’ amongst other adjectives, but somehow they just didn’t cut it. I reckon ‘glorious’ and ‘hilarious’ are better fits, but even variations on ‘side-splitting’ come up short. Let’s simply let the facts speak for themselves. They were 21-9 at one point yesterday...
Unnecessary sledging is a slippery slope
Much has been made of Jimmy Anderson’s verbal confrontations with the Aussies during the first three tests. Stuart Clark, who I admit is not my favourite person, even suggested that Anderson had become Australia’s ‘twelfth man’; his logic was that Jimmy’s sledging irked the Australians and motivated them to play so well at Perth. Clark was of course talking balderdash – the Aussies were clearly fired up before the series even started – but his sentiments raised an important issue. Does sledging...
Pie-chucker makes the critics eat their words
It has taken me forty eight hours to find the willpower to write something about events at Perth. I’ve been avoiding the Ashes since the first session of day two. I even avoided the news channels in case there was a sports update. And I’ve particularly avoided tattoo parlours that specialise in ridiculous and effeminate cherry blossom designs. The reason, of course, is that they remind me of Mitchell Johnson. I could write something balanced and insightful about the third test but that’s not my...
