Showing posts with label England vs Australia ODIs 2010. Show all posts
Showing posts with label England vs Australia ODIs 2010. Show all posts
Friday, 25 June 2010
Today's burning question
Should plucky minnows like Bangladesh and Australia even be playing international cricket at the moment? Is it doing them any good to keep losing all the time? Arf.
Wednesday, 23 June 2010
Format's last theorem
The sun has got to Mike Selvey, the Guardian's estimable cricket correspondent. I know it was hot at the Rose Bowl, but he seems to have entered a fever-dream in which ODI number 3000 [for that's what it was] has somehow saved the format.
'If there's a fault in 50 over cricket,' he writes, 'it lies not, for example in the so-called boring middle overs, but in the number of ODIs that have been played over the past decade with little or no context'.
Fifty per cent right, Mike. It's both. What was noticeable at the start of the match was the complete lack of edge. The atmosphere was nothing like an Ashes summer. England big guns KP and Graeme Swann were barely engaged in the field. It was just another ODI - fun but nothing more. Robbed of context, it had little meaning.
Totals are also becoming anachronistic. When you've seen 200 scored from 20 overs, what's the excuse for 260 from 50? Pure tradition had Australia conditioned into thinking that was an acceptable score. The ease with which Morgan pressed the accelerator was credit to the fact he's touched by genius, sure, but it also showed how much T20 has changed the game. 260 at five an over - how challenging was that for a man bred in T20?
Selvey calls the idea of a two-innings T20 game 'a ludicrous extreme' and goes on 'quite why two T20 games would not do the job is beyond me'.
Quite why the dynamics of a two innings game have to be explained to a cricket correspondent is beyond me, too. Wake up Selv. It's over. This was ODI 3000. I'll bet whatever you like there aren't another 3000.
'If there's a fault in 50 over cricket,' he writes, 'it lies not, for example in the so-called boring middle overs, but in the number of ODIs that have been played over the past decade with little or no context'.
Fifty per cent right, Mike. It's both. What was noticeable at the start of the match was the complete lack of edge. The atmosphere was nothing like an Ashes summer. England big guns KP and Graeme Swann were barely engaged in the field. It was just another ODI - fun but nothing more. Robbed of context, it had little meaning.
Totals are also becoming anachronistic. When you've seen 200 scored from 20 overs, what's the excuse for 260 from 50? Pure tradition had Australia conditioned into thinking that was an acceptable score. The ease with which Morgan pressed the accelerator was credit to the fact he's touched by genius, sure, but it also showed how much T20 has changed the game. 260 at five an over - how challenging was that for a man bred in T20?
Selvey calls the idea of a two-innings T20 game 'a ludicrous extreme' and goes on 'quite why two T20 games would not do the job is beyond me'.
Quite why the dynamics of a two innings game have to be explained to a cricket correspondent is beyond me, too. Wake up Selv. It's over. This was ODI 3000. I'll bet whatever you like there aren't another 3000.
Face value
To the Rose Bowl, for an implausibly perfect summer day in the Hamble Valley, cradle of the game, the kind of day that you bat on in your dreams. The game was won by a dream of an innings too. The prime currency in the new age of batting is power, but yesterday, power alone was not enough. Rapier thrusts were what counted.
The last time I saw the captain of Australia in the flesh, he was walking down the street. Yesterday, before the game, he took some throw downs right in front of us. For anyone who loves batting, it was worth the price of admission alone. He brought a couple of bats, and, with one pad on, began drilling the ball back past the thrower. The first bat went okay, but when he switched to the second, the ball started to ring from it. With small turns of the face, he hit balls of exactly the same length and direction in an arc from cover to mid on.
Shane Watson, a new brutalist, had a go after Ponting, and he struck the ball harder, but each of his just ran straight back past the thrower. After a while he lumbered off, none the wiser about his game.
Ponting had a couple of purely struck boundaries before he fell hook-pulling [again], but Eion Morgan showed exactly the value of being able to control the bat face as England glided home. Gripping right down at the base of the handle, he slid the ball through ridiculously narrow gaps in the field without raising his bat above the horizontal. Ponting knew Australia were done way before the end, and he knew he couldn't stop it, either.
The last time I saw the captain of Australia in the flesh, he was walking down the street. Yesterday, before the game, he took some throw downs right in front of us. For anyone who loves batting, it was worth the price of admission alone. He brought a couple of bats, and, with one pad on, began drilling the ball back past the thrower. The first bat went okay, but when he switched to the second, the ball started to ring from it. With small turns of the face, he hit balls of exactly the same length and direction in an arc from cover to mid on.
Shane Watson, a new brutalist, had a go after Ponting, and he struck the ball harder, but each of his just ran straight back past the thrower. After a while he lumbered off, none the wiser about his game.
Ponting had a couple of purely struck boundaries before he fell hook-pulling [again], but Eion Morgan showed exactly the value of being able to control the bat face as England glided home. Gripping right down at the base of the handle, he slid the ball through ridiculously narrow gaps in the field without raising his bat above the horizontal. Ponting knew Australia were done way before the end, and he knew he couldn't stop it, either.
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