Melbourne : Day 1 : Too much pressure (for England)
About 6am this morning I got a text message from a good friend of mine:
Mate, am watching the cricket at the MCG. Can’t believe what a shocker. Hope you’ve had a good Xmas. Annabelle is still super hot.
Despite being incredibly jealous at my non-cricket-loving friend who was both watching the cricket at the MCG with 90,000 other people and also spending the day with Annabelle, who is, apparently, still as hot today as she was when I first met her some 10 years ago at a small house party in Melbourne, I was inclined to agree with him. I was, admittedly, considerably worse for wear having spent the day making merry and was lying on my couch the wrong side of several bottles of red wine (my head is currently reminding me of that fact, and my stomach is questioning whether I should really yet be out of bed), but the word “shocker” does seem to be fairly appropriate to describe the events of the first day of the 4th test. They were hardly surprising, though.
Choosing to bat after winning the toss was a brave decision by Freddie. The weather was fairly miserable, it was very overcast, the pitch was wet and the conditions really looked perfect for seam and swing bowling. Lee, McGrath and Clark all had fun and sent down many an unplayable delivery, but it took, you guessed it, Shane Warne to really do the damage. No doubt the pressure that built up from some very tight bowling from the seamers, resulting in an impossibly slow run rate added to it, but it seems the epic occasion, that is, being on the hunt for your 700th wicket, in your home ground, playing in your last test there was just the incentive Warne needed to take a memorable 5fer. Andrew Strauss battled long and hard for a well-earned even 50 but became Warne’s 700th bunny and then no other England batsman put up any real resistance. It really was business as usual as England crumpled to 159 all out - the memories of Adelaide were all too clear and present. Australia ended the day on 48-2.
England might be reasonably happy with 159. Paul Collingwood had a full set of lucky escapes and Andrew Symonds was right to look mystified by Rudi Koertzen’s evidently finger glued to the inside of his trousers. But on such a large ground, with a wet outfield, this is going to be a low scoring game as boundaries were difficult to come by. It was Australia’s day though, again, given that out of the 16 days of cricket played so far in this series, Australia can lay claim to at least 15 of them, and their bowling certainly rubbished any suggestions that they may have lost focus surrounding Warne and McGrath’s decisions to retire, instead they seem determined to make the most of the time they have left together. About the only negative was the Australian fielding, with Hayden and Gilchrist both dropping sitters. Gilchrist had a shocker all round, though, missing a stumping of KP off Warne. Fortunately Warne already had the 700th by then. Flintoff was all at sea again, and KP played a typical innings - edgy, risky and inspired little confidence.
In spite of England’s dismal performance, I would still dearly loved to have been in the MCG, surrounded by 90,000 other people, including Annabelle. The noise, the atmosphere, it must have been amazing. I’m not even going make predictions for Day 2, as it’s fairly obvious that England need to dismiss Australia quickly and cheaply. Should they fail, then 4-0 is looking inevitable.
Tags: 700-wickets, Australia, glenn-mcgrath, mcg, melbourne, record, Shane-Warne, The-AshesRelated Stories
POSTED IN: Cricket
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