Friday, October 19, 2007

Away from the action

I'm in London visiting family at the moment and so am not in close touch with the Australian cricket scene.

I have however read on Cricinfo that South Australia began its first class season earlier this week with a drubbing at the hands of Victoria. Just like last year.

The scorecard suggests that neither SA's batting or, more surprisingly, its bowling are of a standard likely to push other teams hard in the Pura Cup four day competition.

Monday, October 08, 2007

Brief mentions

International cricket

In recent weeks cricket has been overshadowed, at least in local media coverage, by other sporting events, eg the AFL and NRL finals and the Rugby World Cup quarter finals (where Australian vaunting and puffing on a scale not seen since Glenn McGrath predicted a 5- 0 result in the 2005 Ashes series received a sharp reality check).

Nevertheless the international cricket round continues and today India defeated Australia by 8 runs at Chandigarh, thereby keeping the seven match series alive. Australia 2, India 1, washout 1, with 3 to play.

On paper India look good. Australia have fielded a relative newcomer, James Hopes, and used Brad Haddin as a stopgap batter, but the team has, at least until today, exposed the limitations of the Indian attack.

I will not venture a prediction about the outcome of the rest of this series, but will look forward to India's visit here later this season.

Domestic cricket

A couple of reminders today that the local season will soon be upon us. The Australian lists ( or tucks away) in the Weekend Scoreboard section on p24 all the first class team squads including changes from last season. Alas, this isn't online: the nearest thing seems to be on the Cricket Australia website (and this requires a lot of clicking and scrolling to access). Tonight on ABC TV I also heard an ad promo for this year's ABC Cricket Magazine (but can't find any mention of it on the ABC website).

Monday, October 01, 2007

Colours lowered



The title of my previous post was not intended to put the knockers on Port Adelaide in the AFL final, though their colours were certainly lowered metaphorically by Geelong, and literally by a supporter, as the photo above which I took yesterday in the Adelaide Hills shows (apologies for the picture quality: I'm still coming to terms with a new camera).

PS I've now posted the answer to the question as an update to my previous post.