What do they know of Cricket who only cricket know. All the world is a stage, all the world, including the cricket-field, and all the men and women merely players.
The typical question after a match which one side has dominated but failed to win is who will take the momentum into the next match. Australia have asserted their dominance over England in all aspects of the game, and will now be confident that they can take the series comfortably if they play as well as they can. England, meanwhile, are aware that they have a few days to regroup and have got through what must surely be their worst performance of the summer completely unscathed.
So who has the momentum? For me, nobody. One could argue that the force is currently with England, but if Andrew Strauss is cleaned up in the first over by a vicious Mitchell Johnson yorker the so-called momentum will be right back with Australia again. Likewise, if England rack up 400 on the first day again, any talk of Australia’s dominance will be swiftly hushed. When the momentum is prone to changing so quickly, it’s not even there.
The score in the series is 0-0. The Lord’s test will be won by whichever team performs better over the five days, not who has an imaginary force behind them as a result of this drawn match.
It’s hard to see Lord’s producing a result with the state of the pitch in recent years (although there was an excellent sporting pitch for the West Indies game this year). Let’s hope for cricket’s sake that a series which has just come alive so dramatically isn’t killed stone dead by a horrendous 600-plays-600 draw.
As much as I try to block the winter of 2006/07 out of my mind, brutal memories of the England team being swept aside by a fantastic Australian team will always be there, ready to haunt me when I am vulnerable.
These last four days, though, the memories have been more prominent than ever. See, in general I remember the last Ashes series, and I just think, “five-nil, grim, epic fail,” or some other generic thoughts of doom. But as I watch my team fall to pieces, it’s all a lot more vivid.
The thing about 2006/07 was that England were not totally crushed from the first ball until the last throughout the series. That would have actually been preferable to the way we performed. The big problem England had throughout that series was that whenever a session went the right way, it wasn’t capitalised upon in the following one. If we batted well in an innings, we would invariaribly bowl poorly. If we ever looked like we were going to have Australia on the ropes, we wouldn’t go in for the kill. I remember jumping round my office as Monty took five wickets in Perth, only for England to go and post a lower first innings total. and that was that, as Adam Gilchrist destroyed the England attack in the second innings.
You can find such instances repeatedly over those five Tests, but enough of the history lesson. The point is that if you look at this Test so far, England have been dominated, yet it need not have been that way.
At the end of the first day, it was probably 2-1 to Australia in terms of sessions, but they had only just shaded the final session, when they dismissed Flintoff and Prior late on. This is key. Had England opened up with those two batsmen the next day, we might well be looking at a different contest altogether.
But in the match’s fourth session, the England lower-order posted 99 runs, which should really have had their tails up as they came out to bowl. England had won the first session and posted a good total. It was time to make it count. To go in for the kill…
I don’t need to remind you about the partnership Ponting and Katich put on, so I won’t. But I’ll fast forward to Friday’s morning session, and once again it was a great session for England. Three much needed wickets, and there was the chance to still emerge from the first innings with a lead. The momentum was with England and..and..and – what did Australia wind up posting? Something like 3000-6 I think.
Australia really have batted brilliantly here, and the ball that got Prior back in the first innings in particular was a good one. But at each point in the match where England had momentum and looked like making a contest of it, they just fizzled away, said, “here you go Australia, you take the initiative and run with it.”
All sorts of pessimism is flying around in the wake of the first four days of these Ashes. England might yet not lose this match. But if we are to see the urn back in English hands this summer, then the players need to remember that winning one session isn’t enough. When you have momentum, use it. Win days, not sessions. Starting with today, please.
It didn’t take long, did it? The teams were relatively evenly-matched for the first couple of days, and some England fans continued to allow themselves to be kidded that there wasn’t a lot between them this time around, or even that England had the better combination. Well, after four (or, minus the time lost to rain, more like three-and-a-half) days, Australia have asserted their familiar superiority and England their familiar inability to produce their best so long as the opposition comes from Australia, regardless of how good the actual players are or aren’t.
Sunil Gavaskar turned sixty today. I too will turn sixty in seven months time and that, perhaps, makes it easier to accept Sunil Gavaskar as an old man (if sixty is old) and not the same youngster who so very suddenly burst upon the collective psyche of Indian cricket fans thirty-nine winterrs ago.
Childish Things have released the first patch for International Cricket Captain 2009 addressing various bugs in the initial release.
Atari have officially released news that Ashes Cricket 2009 will be released on 13th August 2009 in Australia. The UK release date is not known, but a release date of 7th August 2009 has been mentioned previously.
….but, thankfully, he did anyway.
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Let`s see some of your witticisms on the forum!
Australia were, by a country mile, the better team today. They put the ball in the right areas, bowled some excellent deliveries, fielded well- particularly Mike Hussey- and did particularly well with difficult conditions. England, meanwhile, got the rub of the green. They batted poorly, scrapping their way to starts before losing their wickets to horrible shots. KP’s dismissal was probably the worst shot I’ve ever seen him get out to.
None of this matters though, because Australia don’t hold the advantage at the moment. I’d say the game’s pretty evenly poised with two donkeys to come in for England, but a lot of onlookers are putting England on top from here. A pretty reasonable outcome from a day in which they were firmly second best.
Firstly, they got lucky. There’s no shame in getting lucky, of course. But they could have been out a few times each. Inside edges missed the stumps, outside edges fell short, the umpires made a couple of questionable decisions in their favour. Until the end of the final session, things were simply going England’s way.
Secondly, they won the toss, and it looks like an important one. The pitch seems set to deteriorate as the game goes on, and Australia will be acutely aware throughout that they’ll probably have to bat last one it.
Thirdly, they’ve picked two specialist spinners. When you go in with a two-spinner policy on a pitch like this, you’re banking on keeping the pace for the first few days then closing in hard towards the end when conditions favour you. England have done the first bit, now they need Swann and Panesar to step up and show what they can do.