At last a result as Australia defeat Sri Lanka: ODI#3

Australia 6/253 [50 0vers] (M Clarke 77 no, A Gilchrist 61, M Hayden 42 defeated Sri Lanka 125 [31.3 overs] (K Sangakkara 42, N Bracken 5/47) by 128 runs with 111 balls to spare at the SCG.

Sydney's monsoon paused long enough to allow Australia to bat first, post a healthy score and then bowl Sri Lanka out cheaply. On paper it was a convincing win, but while Kumar Sangakkara was still at the crease and firing well, that outcome was by no means certain. When Nathan Bracken had him lbw for 42/ 41b with a beautiful ball which cut back it was 4/74. Although more than 30 overs remained the Sri Lankans threw the game away with a combination of bad strokeplay and stupid running between the wickets.

Bracken's 8.3-0-47-5 deservedly won him the player of the match award, though in many other circumstances Michael Clarke's 77 no/86b would have been enough to take the prize. By almost anyone else's standards Adam Gilchrist's 61 in 81 balls as opener would also be a contender but he was slow to get out of the blocks and Matthew Hayden made most of the early running (and runs): 41 of the first 53. Gilchrist subsequently accelerated but it was Hayden's, not his, aggression which remained in the mind.

The Sri Lanka attack began sloppily, regrouped when Muttiah Muraliduran came on, and then, having Australia 5/190 in over 42, let things slip as Clarke and James Hopes, in another impressive performance (34/ 29b followed by five tidy overs for 15) reasserted Australia's supremacy with a 63 run/ 48b partnership for the 6th wicket.

253 was a good total on the SCG. If Sri Lanka were going to chase it down they needed at least two substantial innings: they had only one cameo and no answers to the varied Australian attack where everyone bowled well, apart from one Brett Lee over which went for 16.

The ease with which Australia cruised to victory must worry Sri Lanka, who may still be carrying memories of their unsuccessful test campaign here earlier this season. They're normally a good one day team but in this game they carried too many passengers (the scorecard gives an indication of who these were) to sustain a challenge to their opponents. Despite what some commentators may have suggested before the series began, the prospect of Australia not qualifying for the finals for the moment looks remote indeed.

Scorecard.

Cricinfo Bulletin.

Standing in the cyber slips cordon: the new world of cricket supporters and commentary

A good piece " Cyber sledging draws back cultural curtain" by Peter Lalor in The Australian.

Extract:

Controversial decisions are replayed on YouTube. Opinions voiced on blogs, private and commercial. News stories are beamed from the SCG to Channel Nine and Chennai. The emphasis and angle of those stories is rarely the same.

One thing has become apparent in the din of this feverish summer and it is that the modern game is played in front of an international audience whose opinions shout and shape with the immediacy and volume once reserved for the heartily lunged likes of Yabba on Sydney’s hill.

Should Yabba have shouted at Harbhajan Singh to leave our flies alone he may well have found himself featured at the top of the next hour’s news bulletin everywhere from Kashmir to Kochi and the subject of blog-analysis in Mumbai and Baroda.

“Fat Aussie Fool with Fly Fetish attacks her Bhaji! Effigy Burned in Punjap Protest!’’

Things have changed irrevocably.

Quantum physicists believe the act of watching affects the observed reality. Cricket is not immune, but this summer it has become apparent that its observed reality is affected by the number and cultural backgrounds of the observer.

India recover but rain again prevents result : CB Series ODI#2

India 4/267 [50 overs] (G Gambhir 102 no, M S Dhoni 88 no) v Sri Lanka who did not bat because of rain. No Result.

On this occasion the rain came to the Gabba at the end of the Indian innings and didn't let up enough to allow Sri Lanka to start theirs. A pity since the game looked to be fairly evenly poised.

India began well with openers Virender Sehwag and Sachin Tendulkar putting on 68 before the Sri Lankan attack forced the batsmen and, it appeared from Rohit Sharma's case, an umpire into error. 4/83 in the 21st over was decidedly shaky, but Gautam Gambhir and skipper Mahendra Singh Dhoni built on this cautiously and later with increasing aggression, adding 184 without further loss.

As always, the statistics don't tell the whole story: at the 33 over drink break India were 4/128 and Channel 9's scenario generator projected a relatively modest final score unless the run rate increased rapidly. It did, as Gambhir, after reaching 50 from 71b accelerated to reach 100 in only 28 more balls, finishing with 102/101b (10x4, 1x 6). Dhoni was no laggard either: his 50 took 74b yet he finished with 88/ 95b (5x4, 1 x 6).

All this was of no value to either team, so we will hope, despite the welcome rains in much of the country, for a result soon.

Scorecard

Cricinfo Bulletin.

Captain dropped

It hasn't exactly come as a surprise but Nathan Adcock has been dropped from the SA Pura Cup team:

The move had been anticipated for some time following Adcock's poor run with the bat - he averages 13.83 in first-class matches this year - but the selectors finally lost patience and left him out of the side to face Tasmania on Friday.

The Redbacks' chairman of selectors, Paul Nobes, said that Adcock remained in charge of the limited-overs outfit and the decision was purely based on his Pura Cup form rather than the players having lost confidence in him. "We pick the cricket team, then we pick the captain," Nobes told Cricinfo. "It's a theory that's been used in Australian cricket for a long time."

While it's not common, there have been times when a captain has been picked before the team, eg Bob Simpson was recalled to the Australian captaincy in the late 1970s when World Series Cricket threatened the traditional game; in 1959-60 Howard Mutton made his debut for and captained South Australia at the age of 35, and I seem to recall a time in the mid 1970s when Bob Blewett (Greg's father) was appointed captain ahead of some who thought they had better claims to both the office and to his position in the team.

Whether Adcock should have been appointed as captain in the first place is a moot point:

Eyebrows were raised when he was announced as captain in the off-season, given his struggle to nail a first team spot, and Nobes was reluctant to say when he thought he would return. "That's up to him about getting his form together and being ready to perform. We will give him opportunities to do that but it definitely goes back into his court to be able to perform.

"He still remains captain of our one-day side, because he still makes that team so it's nothing to do with anything other than form." In one-day cricket this season he averages 37.40 with the ball, at an economy of 6.23, and only 20.20 with the bat, whereas last year he was in the fifties. But he has overseen a handy run for South Australia in the FR Cup.

Whether [ replacement captain] Manou will also find the pressure of keeping, batting and captaining too much remains to be seen. His batting form has certainly picked up after he lost his position through most of last season, and he has made two of his three first-class centuries this summer.

SA's performances this season have been a hotch-potch of inconsistency. Apart from Darren Lehmann's and now Shaun Tait's retirements both batting and bowling departments, with some notable (and unexpected) exceptions, have underperformed. Contracted Australian players and spin bowlers Dan Cullen and Cullen Bailey can't, as their coach Terry Jenner pointed out on tonight's ABC TV News, can't get a game, and this at a time when Australia's spin bowling resources are their weakest for many years.

It's all very well to talk, as Nobes does, if I follow his fractured English correctly, about picking the best team, but why doesn't the best team include at least one spinner? Couldn't the national selectors request that all their contracted players get as much top class cricket as possible? Even if that means letting them play for other states? Strings clearly have been pulled this year to allow Daniel Christian to transfer from NSW to SA after the start of the season. If it's OK for one, why not for others? Must as I like to see the Redbacks winning, I'm the first to concede that the needs of the national team must be paramount. Both Bailey and Cullen must be given a fair chance to show what they can do at state level and not left in limbo.

Lee shines but to no avail as rain ruins game

India 194 [45 overs] (G Gambhir 39, M S Dhoni 37, B Lee 9-2-27-5); Australia 3/51 [7.3 overs].
No result.

It's a pity that there isn't a player of the match award for no result games, because Brett Lee deserved one for his outstanding quick bowling performance against India.

The longstanding Gabba tradition of rain interfering with play returned with a vengeance. The match was interestingly poised (and frequent recourse was had to the Duckworth - Lewis method) but even for television viewers there seemed to be too many stoppages to keep up with the changing targets. S Rajeesh on Cricinfo tries valiantly to explain them, but I suspect that most people at the ground were relieved when the ultimate downpour ended the game.

Scorecard.

Cricinfo Bulletin.

Australia win T20 practice match as India crumble

Australia 1/75 in 11.2 overs (M Clarke 37 no) defeated India all out 74 in 17.3 overs(N Bracken 3/11) by 9 wickets with 52 balls to spare.

The match was played at the MCG before 84,041 spectators. India, whose officials had indicated that they would treat the game as a practice match, did not include Sachin Tendulkar. Ricky Ponting did not play for Australia because of injury.

Enough said?

For more information see:

Scorecard (includes ball by ball commentary), and Cricinfo Bulletin.

A less than sanguine scenario for Australian cricket?

In today's Crikey Charles Happell has a piece: "Rugby woes offer a timely warning for Cricket Australia".

The rugby he's referring to is Rugby Union, whose CEO recently admitted that the sport was losing money at a rapid rate of knots. How does this affect cricket or, to be more precise, Cricket Australia?

Happell draws three parallels between the sports

Like rugby, cricket is played well by six or eight nations. It is no soccer or basketball...

Like rugby, which is now essentially run by England and France, cricket’s powerbase has shifted dramatically in the past decade.... to the sub-continent, that is to say India. ... As anyone who has witnessed India flex its newfound muscle over the Harbhajan Singh affair will appreciate...

And, like rugby, cricket’s national team must remain competitive. If not, that’s the start of the slippery slope to oblivion.

While there's little sign that Australia's cricket will cease to be competitive in the next 3-5 years (dominant is another matter), what about beyond then? Will we look back upon the run of 16 Test victories which India arrested in Perth as the last golden age of Australian cricket?