Brisbane: Day 2: Good cricket
You can’t take it away from the Aussies that they do play some beautiful cricket. I enjoy watching cricket, and I’ve not seen much better cricket than today. Australia were clnicial, precise and deadly. They did their job brilliantly, starting with a glorious 196 from Ponting, and backed up solidly by runs from pretty much everyone else in the team. Posting 602-9 dec was job one, and it was a job well done.
Admittedly, when you have Brett Lee opening the bowling for you, you have the right to be a bit smug. But the difference between Lee’s opening delivery and Harmison’s? Well it was obvious, and yet another sign of things to come. Not to mention McGrath opening up from the other end, and despite almost being ready to draw his pension, he certainly provided a lesson to the youngsters of the England team on how to bowl. Stuart Clark looked handy enough. Oh and Shane Warne.
This all amounted to England ending day 1 on a pitiful 53-3, the casualties: Strauss, Cook and Collingwood. Strauss should bit sitting in the corner of a very dark room with no supper thinking about what he did for that sort of dismissal, literally gifting it away. Cook got a good ‘un, and Collingwood, well, it was really a case of putting him out of his misery, he really doesn’t look like a No.4 batsman.
It still makes me laugh to see some of the interviews with the Aussies before the series started, where the likes of Atherton and Hussein were trying to goad them in to saying something silly meanwhile bigging up England by saying things like “So how humiliating was it to lose in England”, “Do you want vengeance for England being all over you last year” - which considering it was the first time we’d won in like 20 years… well you get the point. Perhaps last year really was only a blip in both teams respective results - that is, Australia winning and England losing.
That’s quite cynical and it’s only the first game, but I’m struggling to see how the bowling attack will ever take 20 wickets. It just doesn’t have the venom required. And as for our batting - Brett Lee, number 8 for Australia and a bowler, outscored 3 of our top order batsmen.
Two months ago Fletcher should have said “(Subject to injury) this is the starting 12″ and let the team settle and bond and do all the other manly dressing room stuff. Despite being hideously out of form, most of the boys barely know what day it is due to all the change. The preparation has been abysmal.
We all hoped to turn on the TV last night and to see Harmison a changed man. He was going to steam in and get 5fer in 3 overs. Not so. Since there’s no rest between this test and the next, there’s little or no opportunity for him to do any work on his action, so I think it will be very hard for Fletcher to pick him for the next game. But what will that do to his confidence?
“It’s just one big f*ck up all round.”
Tags: Australia, brett-lee, brisbane, cricket, day-2, England, mcgrath, rubbish, The-AshesRelated Stories
POSTED IN: Cricket
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