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.

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).

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.

Which England cricketer helped lower Port Adelaide's colours?

As Port Adelaide prepares to face Geelong in Saturday's AFL Grand Final it's worth pointing out that Port is one of the few Aussie Rules clubs to have played an international match against England.

The Pommies were a rugby team touring Australia & NZ who couldn't get decent rugby opposition in Victoria and SA so played a few games of Australian Rules, including one against Port Adelaide.

Surprisingly, since Port were almost at full strength, the visitors won 8 - 8 to 7- 8.

In case you're wondering what all this is doing here there is a cricket connection. The England team in that game included a player who also captained England at cricket. Who was he? Answers by 3pm Saturday please.

Answer ( added 1 October): A E (Andrew) Stoddart. See his Wisden obituary here . I could find very little online aout the Aussie Rules matches of the tour, so I went to The Advertiser report to check that he did actually play: he did and was named as one of the "prominent" players in the game.

Another piece of trivia: in those days Port Adelaide played in colours more akin to those of the Crows or the Brisbane Lions: for a photo of a Port player c 1896 see this Wikipedia article on Australian rules football in South Australia.

Close contest strengthens future of Twenty20

India has defeated Pakistan by 5 runs at Johannesburg in the final of the inaugural world Twenty20 Championship.

I thought that India didn't make enough runs against generally hostile Pakistan bowling, though passing 150, from a not too difficult chance which Mohammad Hafeez not only fluffed but knocked over the boundary for 6, gave them something to bowl at on the slowish pitch.

Pakistan got off to a rollercoaster start: a wicket and 4 runs from the first probing R P Singh over, followed by a loose one by Sreesanth which conceded 21; Singh again took a wicket in his second; and then, surprisingly, a Sreesanth maiden. 4/31 from 4 overs set the pattern for the innings: each time as Pakistan seemed to pull ahead and position themselves for a final onslaught, they lost another wicket. 4/65 from 9 overs needed the middle order to fire, but Shoab Malik and Shahid Afridi were both dismissed by Irfan Pathan in the same over (6/77 from 11.4 overs). The 7th wicket fell, again to Pathan senior (whose brother made his international debut in the game). Misbah-ul-Haq launched an assault on Harbajan Singh but the errant Sreesanth took a wicket with his last ball (4 - 1 - 44 - 1!) . 8/138 from 18 overs became 9/141 from 19.5 overs.

An edged 4 from the final ball left 13 required from the last over. Joginder Sharma, not the best of the Indian attack, began with a wide: 12 required from 6b . Misbah-ul-Haq played and missed the next ball but hit the following one for six: now 6 required from 4 balls. For the first time in several overs Pakistan looked the likelier to win. But it wasn't to be as Misbah (43/38b) hit the next delivery to Sreesanth.

An enthralling game and one which will, despite the misgivings of cricket purists such as Gideon Haigh writing in today's Australian (and before the final was played), entrench Twenty20 even further in the international cricket calendar. Much as I enjoyed the final (and most of the other games I've seen), I'm not sure that I want it to diminish the amount of test cricket played between the stronger countries. But given the intense India - Pakistan rivalry and control of modern cricket, to which Haigh refers in his article (not to mention Australia's relatively modest performance) this is unlikely to happen.

Cricinfo's match package is here . The site also has a summary of newspaper comments (including Haigh's) from around the world.

India outplays Australia in Twenty20 semifinal

I stayed up overnight (almost to the equinoctial dawn as it turned out) to watch India defeat Australia in the Twenty20 semifinal at Durban.

While I was a Twenty20 sceptic (how can a proper cricket match consist of 20 overs a side?) I am less so now after watching some extraordinary individual performances, not all of them by batters. Yuvraj Singh's 70/30b deservedly won him the Player of the Match award, but two of the Indian bowlers S Sreesanth (4-1-12-2) and Harbajan Singh (4-0-24-1 towards the end) showed how wrong I was to think that this diluted form of the game is dominated by batters.

Yes, it isn't a middle order batter's (or mediocre bowler's) game: the Australian batting collapse confirmed the former and some individual overs the latter proposition. But there are sufficient opportunities for players (except, in many situations, nos 5 and beyond in the batting order) to shift the game in their team's direction.

Congratulations to India, who outplayed Australia. The 15 run margin of victory flattered Australia, who were a bowler and at least one batter light, and who, despite giving it their all in the field, weren't collectively as nimble as we've come to expect.

Upset of upsets as Zimbabwe beat Australia

I know it's only Twenty20, but it's an international tournament, a World Cup, so Australia should have done better than to lose to Zimbabwe by one wicket. I wonder how many people had put money on them at 50 to 1?

That said, and despite my aversion to the regime presently in power in Zimbabwe, I congratulate the cricketers.

The Australian team looked a bit unbalanced, with four quick bowlers, a no specialist spinner (Brad Hogg was omitted, though Andrew Symonds played) and two wicketkeepers. Zimbabwe also fielded two wicketkeepers, one whom, Brendan Taylor, topscored with the bat and apparently kept well (the other, Taitenda Taibu, made a more modest contribution).


No doubt the game will come as a wake up call to Australia, who must now beat England to progress further; and no doubt the media will enjoy rubbing salt into Australia's wounds.

Scorecard