CricDigs Blogs

It’s Sydney Cricket ground again, same venue where there was this big Drama that took place the last time India played Australia. In the end the Australians (with tremendous help from Steve Buckner and some unsportsmanlike behavior from the Aussie Captain) managed to beat India.

Now Pakistan have them in situation from where the Pakistanis can surely dictate the terms and delivery a series leveling blow. The question is whether they will keep the control they have or lose the plot??

We will find out today…The first session belonged to the Aussies but with a very potent bowling attack from Pakistan one would never know…

You can always bank upon Pakistan to be what no cricket fan wants them to be — hopelessly unpredictable and judgemental. The team just won the T20 World Cup and just when it looked like things were getting back to normal, the tests and ODI series loss to Sri Lanka has come to the fore. What is more disturbing is how comprehensively Pakistan was defeated in every aspect of their game. Further, the ODI loss has evoked negative reactions like match-fixing and news of supposed bookies in the Pakistan team’s hotel lobby is sure to fire-up this issue beyond control. These are self-destructive habits that have always haunted Pakistani cricket and it is about time that the PCB shed its image of being some sort of a colonial powerhouse and started acting like a sports regulatory body and took responsibility for its actions.

Michael Clarke is continuously building upon the reputation of being Australia’s next Steve Waugh as he delivered once again when the team needed it the most. Had it not been for his partnership with Marcus North, Australia would have surely gone down by 2-0 in the Ashes. As things stand now, the momentum seems to be with England as they are already one-up in the series and it is up to Australia to make all the right moves. However, if the England team does sit back and think that they can be passive and let Australia do all the hard work, then things could go horribly wrong. Australia would strike back with vengeance in the fourth test and if England cannot continue with the sustained intensity they have shown till now, it could soon be one all.

The England team was well served in having two all-rounders at number seven and eight. With Flintoff and Stuart Broad walking in after mark prior, it means that this English side does have some serious depth to its batting and it showed on Sunday. Hillfenhaus would have seriously dented any chances of England gaining a lead as he kept on dismissing the top-order batsmen. However, with these two bowler-cum-batsmen coming together, England was able to pile up the lead and more critically, at a fair clip. The run rate and the volume of runs were both important considering that this is a rain-hit match and conditions and the length of session could both go awkward at any time. As it turned out, Flintoff was the highest scorer for his side and Broad too contributed with a half century.

Sri Lanka is really having it good in the ongoing one-day series against Pakistan. They had a bit of a scare before winning the first match and now they have just wrapped up the second game, rather comfortably. What is more surprising is the ineffectiveness of Pakistan’s middle order and the fact that both Ajmal and Afridi haven’t been able to spin the ball and make their overs count for anything substantial. This combination was being looked upon as the core of Pakistan’s strategy to contain the Lankan batsmen but both the bowlers have been found guilty of pitching the ball short or make it hurry on to the batsmen, losing out on guile or any degree of appreciable spin. This has been combined with the problem of the skipper, Younis Khan, not firing and being the mainstay of Pakistan’s batting in the middle overs, it has made the team struggle even more. The decision to send-in Afridi up the order too hasn’t fired, but given his past record that cannot be surprising.

It was a James Anderson show according to some folks as he made the Aussie batting line-up crumble after being at a commanding situation wherein they were 125 for the loss of just one wicket. The conditions were typically English, moist and wet to the core, and two typical England bowlers who knew how to utilise them to their advantage — Anderson and Onions, swung the ball beyond conventional expectations. Everybody had been commenting about how Hillfenhaus has been consistently swinging the ball, but it was Anderson who created exaggerated swing this time around and claimed five wickets. Onions was the more controlled of the two bowlers. His four wickets were just as crucial, particularly the two he took in the morning, off two consecutive balls. Anderson looked like a completely different bowler once he started pitching-up the ball and some of his deliveries that came-in towards the batsmen were simply unplayable.

It took Graeme Swann’s bowling to provide England with the breakthrough after Australia chose to bat first in the 3rd Ashes Test Match at Edgbaston. It has to be said that the English bowling was mediocre during the initial 17 – 18 overs. For starters, nearly all the bowlers bowled too short, hardly ever enticing Katich or Watson to be invited on the frontfoot. This was surprising given the fact that it had rained so heavily during the hours just before the test match and everyone expected the ball to swing a lot. But then, to make the ball swing you would have to pitch it up and this clearly wasn’t the agenda of the England bowlers. Swann’s wicket too came more from a change of pace rather than having fooled the batsman or having spun the ball in any way. Even Shane Warne, as a commentator, stated that England were simply wasting the new ball, forgetting the fact that they won the second Ashes test match by making the Aussies batsmen play a lot more shots when they were new at the crease.

Australia were seriously worried about the form of their new-find Hughes and they did what everyone expected them to do — drop the young left-hander for the crucial third encounter against England in the ongoing Ashes 2009. This meant that Watson who has limited experience opening the innings and that too only in the ODIs was promoted at the top of the order. To the surprise of many folks, he didn’t look as out of place as it was imagined. He drove with a lot of confidence and barring a few rash attempted slashes outside the off-stump, Watson was like your regular test opener. He pounced upon the lose deliveries and looked equally good against the short ball, something that was bothering Hughes with Flintoff & Co. continuously digging the ball and making it rise under his helmet.

Well, it does seem so. Just take any commentary team around the globe that consists of cricket players from the earlier years and you would come across a common argument. Nearly each of them is repeating the same thing that T20 is offering just too much cash incentive to players to turn it down. Players like Flintoff and Gayle have been accused of priortizing T20 and tournaments like IPL over their national test match careers simply because a player can earn twice as much with half the effort. Even if this is true, then should only the players be blamed for it? Many cricket players realize that their career isn’t sure to be as long as some of the game’s legends and soon they would be relegated to playing for domestic sides. This is most true for those who have been fighting body injuries over an extended period. Rather than just blaming the players for falling to the greed of T20 shouldn’t the ICC be conducting some in-depth search into why so much, and I mean literally excessive, cash prizes and tournament bounties are being given away only at T20 tournaments. Why not raise the cash stakes for test match cricket too??

Nearly every cricket fan in England, even those who consider soccer their religion has his eyes fixed on the third test match of the historic Australia-England rivalry and it seems that all roads in are leading to Edgbaston. For starters, this is not a traditional venue for hosting Ashes test matches and this trend started only recently. Secondly, the pitch conditions could severely affect the chances of the side batting first. In fact, some local cricket experts here are so sure about the ball swinging during the first morning that they have bought tickets only for half the day for the opening morning’s session. The reason — they believe that if England are put into bat first, they will not survive for more than 40 overs or so, notwithstanding the fact that there is McGrath or even Brett Lee or for that matter, even Mitchell Johnson is hopelessly out-of-form. This combined with the ongoing debate over Flintoff’s decision to hiatus from test cricket and Andrew Strauss’s request that he should be consulted before English players are leased for the IPL are making things only more interesting.