Considering I can’t see the game, I thought I’d bring you some updates via the cricinfo ball by ball service and my thoughts on these developments from the first half of Day 1.
Hopefully unlike my T20 QBQ updates, I wont grow bored halfway through.. only time will tell. Refresh this post to see the latest…
I swear I’ll get zero work done today. I’m so excited with the Aussie vs South Africa Test Series about to start. When it’s summer, in Australia, I can tell you that cricket’s the number one game in town. Just ask anyone around.
Have been reading from the curator, he reckons the wicket was slow last year due to the domestic T20 final being 3 days prior to the WACA test and that stuffed his preperation. Surely we can chuck this garbage cricket indoors or something, just don’t fúck with our Test Cricket.
So here’s hoping for a green top that gives the Aussie and Saffa quicks all the assistance they could ask for. I want to see the WACA back to being the fastest and meanest pitch on earth.
Stu Clark’s elbow giving up is terrible news for the Baggy Greens. Fortunately Side-Siddle is no slouch, he’s got a lot of heart and will bowl all day uphill into the wind, then rather than rest up in the lunch break he’ll get out his favourite axe and chop some wood in a relaxing David Foster tribute.
My fantasy team, the “Hairy backed sheilas”, is looking pretty good, despite being unable to afford all the NSW players and Hussey. Seems the folks at cricinfo have priced the Blues out of contention, which is understandable as we fúcking rock. In the end Lee had to be dropped, his pricetag of 100k was making it tough to get Clarke and Haddin.
The only good thing to come out of Clark’s injury is Siddle happens to be the cheapest bowler on the park, meaning I can afford more NSW players.
It’s time to claim my prize from the Chappell/Hadlee series, I’d like JRod to write a review of the 2007 Sheffield Shield final in the style of a madly patriotic New South Wales supporter.
I’m honestly not too worried about the toss in Perth, it’s more what we do with it. Batting or Bowling there’s going to be opportunity to impose your will on the series. I’ll be upset to miss the cliché’s due to work so will have a go myself. The bowling team will want to take early wickets to put pressure on the middle order. They can do this by bowling in good areas and pitching it up to allow prodigious swing with the assistance of the good Doctor Fremantle.
South Africa certainly used to be the All Blacks (Rugby World Cup vintage) of Cricket, but have they grown up? Ponting’s been trying real hard to get Smith to talk, alas young Graeme’s learnt a lot from his chronic foot in mouth of 1995. The saffas have Duncan Armstrong on the staff too, and I hear that he’s been involved in beating Australia in the past.
Donald Duck forgets to run
On advice from a Beer and Sport reader that I met in the pub (how random, I have a reader!), I’m going to keep my bítching about institutions to a minimum and will seriously try and get it out of the way in advance.
Perth Tests are always the worst for Aussie audiences getting rectªlly reamed by Channel 9. The schedule of play for NSW/VIC is
For those of us who have jobs, that third session looks prime for watching on the telly, however, those fúcksticks put on their shíthouse news and current affairs shízer so we get nothing between 6pm and 7pm. Sometimes they’ll delay the news by 10 minutes, so we’ll see the end of session two, but miss the first 40 mins of session 3.
Best of all Foxtel are forbidden from showing it as channel 9′s right to exclusive coverage is protected by law. Even though they’re not actually showing it, so, by law, they have the right to deny me coverage of the cricket. C9′s Sydney number is (02) 9906-9999 and I’ll be sure to call and yell abuse at 6:31pm.
Sure the Saffas have 2 guys who bowl over 150kph and swing it. We’ve got three.
Sure they’ve got a spinner who can contain, we’ve got one who turns it and takes wickets.
Sure they’ve got a settled and in form batting line-up. Um.. oh dear.
I’m with Oooh Aaah. 3-0 to the Aussies.
Welcome to Round 1 of the Aussie Cricket WAGS DeathMatch. The rules are simple, just vote for the hottest missus in each pool. If you’re torn between two of the lovely entrants, I suggest you give bonus consideration to the one with the uglier cricketer who would never have scored such a hottie were it not for his sporting career.
All up there’s 8 votes this round, and the images are in the same order as the poll choices. You can hover your mouse over the pictures to see the names, and can also click the thumbnails for the full size and un-cropped picture to open in a new window.
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{democracy:5}
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{democracy:6}
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{democracy:7}
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{democracy:8}
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{democracy:9}
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Ricky losing Gillies trophy
10. Losing the toss
I’d love to see some stats on how many teams have won in India with a first innings defecit. Batting first is key and each test was controlled by the opening innigns. Losing 3 tosses did put us at a dis-advantage, but we could have overcome this.
9. Stupid and thoughtless Dismissals
If you hit the ball directly to mid-on and run you deserve an uppercut. There really is no excuse for this in test cricket, and Hayden, Ponting and Hussey are all guilty as charged in the 4th test. Other memorable brain farts go to the collapse in Mohail that set up India for a win, some of Haddin’s half-hearted spoon’s directly to fielders, and Clarke’s last over lapses.
8. Team Unity
Ponting’s on field spat with Lee in Mohali was the lowest point of the tour. It sent out a message of dis-unity, bad communication, and a team in crisis. These disputes no doubt often happen when touring, but for fúcks sake keep them behind closed doors.
8. Lacking the killer instinct in Bangaluru
Our run rate was simply too slow in the first test, 2.86 in the first innings was below par but the real lack of intent was blocking out Kumble at the end of Day 4. The pre-declaration slog has been sorely missing from this current baggy green squad, oh how I miss thee. The lack of urgency in the first test led to us running out of time with bad light when we could well have been leading 1-0 going to Mohali.
7. the SG Ball
Despite having Troy Cooley who is widely regarded as the best bowling coach in the business, our bowlers didn’t get the SG Ball to talk until Watson and Krejza achieved enlightenment in the 4th Test. Brendan Julian in an interview with Watson about the Indians bowling the new ball cross-seam after Day 4 Test 1, yet at the end of Test 2 the word was we didn’t realise what they were doing.
6. Ordinary fielding
All the direct hits we are used to have gone fishing. Roy, while missed with bat and ball, it is his presence in the field who’se abscence is hurting us most.
5. The spinner
Cameron White is not a Test standard wicket taking bowler. If we were after a part timer, David Hussey or Shaun Marsh would have been worth a nod, but we already have Shane Watson and Michael Clarke as all rounders. The team was never in need of a number 8 batsman. We needed a spinner, or at least someone who had the potential to become a spinner. The selection of Krejza was dictated by no-one else being in the squad, and turned out brilliantly. However, when McGain went home injured we should have called up another spinner to give us more options. Why didn’t we take 5 spinners over if only to get them some experience? We could probably lend them out to Indian domestic teams then pick whoever is performing.
4. Impotent bowling plans
The Mohali pitch was a road when we bowled and a minefield when we batted, then reverted to a road, then back to a minefield. The Indian bowlers to their credit got movement in the air and off the deck while our boys broke their backs bowling uphill into the wind.
3. Not bowling Simon Katich
Why the hell did Rick only bowl Katich in the third test? In the 40 odd overs of spin on Day 5 of the 1st test Katto could well have made the breakthrough. In the second test our attack was impotent as we waited patiently for Anil to declare, still no Katto. In the third test he finally got a shot and looked dangerous from the first ball. He bought some much needed aggression to the bowling crease and had to be seperated from Gambhir by Billy, then dismissed Ganguly. Perhaps the biggest compliment of all was VVS failing to pick his pearler of an arm-ball. So having finally tried Katich, seen him bowl well in Indian conditions, Rick forgets all about it and gives him just 3 tidy overs in the 1st innings in Nagpur on a wicket on which the Off-Spinners were lethal, surely the left-arm chinaman was worth a bit more of a spell?
2. Stars not firing
An ordinary series from Lee who through a hand injury, food poisoning and generally bad form picked up 8 wickets at 61. Ponting started with 123 then went on to score 143 in his next 6 appearances. Hayden copped some ordinary Rauf’s early on but in truth didn’t wake up until the final innings of the series, by which time Ponting had already surrendered.
1. Píss Poor Captaincy
Ponting had a very poor series in many respects, none more so than after Tea on Day 4. There’s been suggestions of match fixing, and lets be honest, that makes more sense than any of his explanations for taking the foot off. Time for him to concentrate on his batting, give the captaincy to Clarke, Hussey, or…. Warne – he’d probably come back to be captain, especially with an Ashes Series coming up.
Ponting changing his field, again
Our over rate is a national disgrace. Ricky threw a test match in order to play New Zealand, apparently out of his love of playing for Australia. I’ve already had my say on that, now I’m going to say some more!
Ponting was fined 20% and the remainder of the team 10% of their match fees, which equates to roughly 0.05% of their annual IPL cashcow. But the really big loss was the Border-Gavaskar trophy which at tea yesterday we were a good chance to retain. I’ve read that a suspension for Ricky was not even on the table, a captain needs to be fined twice in a 12 month period for that to even be an option. Now he’s lost the test, the series, and still got the first fine.
Is 90 overs a day an unreasonable ask? So many teams seem to have trouble with this limit. After taking out drinks, wicket and injury allowances and adding the 30 minutes overtime that has become a rule rather than the exception in modern tests, the target is to bowl, on average, 15 overs an hour or 1 over every 4 minutes.
I’ve done the sums to get a better idea of just how slow we were on Day 4. By Tea we had bowled 50 overs, leaving us 10 short of the target. Of these, Krejza had 15, Johnson 13, Watson 12 and Lee 10. So with an off-spinner bowling 30% of the load, we’ve managed to drop 1 over in every 6! That is a seriously písspoor effort. The general consensus is that Ricky’s tri-overly field changes and general farking around between overs is killing the rate.
There are many ways to increase the over rate while still looking to take wickets – how bout bowling Simon Katich? Or Lee and Johnson off their ODI run-ups rather than the full test run-up? Why not move a bit quicker between overs? These highly pampered stars are professional sportsmen right, surely a jog from fine leg to long off every 4 minutes is not too much to ask?
Is bowling Hussey a good alternative? Sure he hides the ball when running it but who cares when it doesn’t swing? He still has a decent run-up, and I’m in no way convinced that Mike’s all that quick getting through his overs anyway, though I haven’t got out the stopwatch to be sure. Even when Ponting realised the lapse and bought on Hussey he still didn’t speed up his general farking around with the field. Is moving deep mid on 3 metres left then 4 metres right more likely to take a wicket than giving Shane Watson another over when he’s swinging both ways? One excuse I heard from Nielsen was that the quicks were tired, perhaps they could have rested in the 20 minute tea break?
The entire team was fined for this, however with our díckless coach I choose to blame the captain. He’s the one leading out there. He’s the one constantly moving the field. He’s the one deciding the bowling changes, and the one who could be speeding things up.
I was also under the impression that Ponting has been going through a lean patch with the bat, turns out he’s scored 997 runs in the last 12 months so I’ll let that slide, for now..
| Date | Innings | Runs | Opponent | Ground |
| Date | Innings | Runs | Opponent | Ground |
| 08-Nov-07 | 1 | 56 | v Sri Lanka | Brisbane |
| 16-Nov-07 | 1 | 31 | v Sri Lanka | Hobart |
| 16-Nov-07 | 3 | 53 | v Sri Lanka | Hobart |
| 26-Dec-07 | 1 | 4 | v India | Melbourne |
| 26-Dec-07 | 3 | 3 | v India | Melbourne |
| 02-Jan-08 | 1 | 55 | v India | Sydney |
| 02-Jan-08 | 3 | 1 | v India | Sydney |
| 16-Jan-08 | 2 | 20 | v India | Perth |
| 16-Jan-08 | 4 | 45 | v India | Perth |
| 24-Jan-08 | 2 | 140 | v India | Adelaide |
| 22-May-08 | 1 | 158 | v West Indies | Kingston |
| 22-May-08 | 3 | 5 | v West Indies | Kingston |
| 30-May-08 | 1 | 65 | v West Indies | North Sound |
| 30-May-08 | 3 | 38 | v West Indies | North Sound |
| 12-Jun-08 | 1 | 18 | v West Indies | Bridgetown |
| 12-Jun-08 | 3 | 39 | v West Indies | Bridgetown |
| 09-Oct-08 | 1 | 123 | v India | Bangalore |
| 09-Oct-08 | 3 | 17 | v India | Bangalore |
| 17-Oct-08 | 2 | 5 | v India | Mohali |
| 17-Oct-08 | 4 | 2 | v India | Mohali |
| 29-Oct-08 | 2 | 87 | v India | Delhi |
| 06-Nov-08 | 2 | 24 | v India | Nagpur |
| 06-Nov-08 | 4 | 8 | v India | Nagpur |
Bástard!
