Around the World

With so much going on, I just had to take my lunch break for a quick around the world wrap up.

All ten Test playing nations are currently engaged in head to head series. Bangladesh and Zimbabwe and India and Pakistan are in the ODI warm up stage. Meanwhile, England v South Africa, NZ v South Africa and Australia v Sri Lanka have all completed the first Tests of the respective series.

And then there is the Pura Milk Cup final.

I haven’t had time to celebrate Australia’s famous win in the first Test at Galle. It seems old news now but it was a great win. To trail by 160 in the first innings and win by 197 runs is a fantastic achievement. And to have three of the batsmen firing (one of whom was not Ponting) was most welcome. I really dislike Sri Lanka (the cricket team, that is – I have not been to Sri Lanka itself) – it’s a little hard to describe why but I think I can do it with just one word. No, it’s not “chucker”. It is “Ranatunga”. Even though he is long gone, he created enough bad feeling and still opens his fat mouth often enough to further engender bad relationships, I find it lovely when smash his countrymen.

This match took me back to 1993 when we won in Colombo having trailed by 300 runs and still won. Shane Warne would also have happy memories of that match (he is the only survivor from that 1993 team). Warne took his second Test wicket in that match and finished the match with three quick wickets as Australia scraped home by just 16 runs. The match was somewhat of a turning point for the young Warne.

It seems incredible that Warne has now taken 501 test wickets. Perhaps he should retire right now and get an advertising contract with Levis jeans! But don’t let my humour detract from Warne’s momentous achievement. It’s hard to measure how much impact Warne had on the match, aside to say that it was obviously significant. One could speculate that Australia may not have won without Warne. I think he should have been the man of the match. Many things have been said about Warne, both good and bad. When it comes to his character, most of it has been bad. To not play seriously for 12 months and to come back into Test cricket after just two matches and take five wickets in each innings is remarkable. It speaks volumes for Warne, the champion bowler – something that has rarely been in dispute. However, it really must say something about his character.

I was going to write something at the end of day two, with Australia on the verge of oblivion but didn’t have time. It was going to be something like “Welcome back Warnie. Welcome back to the team that has become world champion leather chasers”. I would have looked a goose because all that changed and it was because of Warne. Over the years, the Australian team has been very good at “turning it around” at the start of a new day. It is something that they haven’t been able to easily do in the past six months. The reason probably is that it is hard to change momentum in a Test match and basically, you need true champions to do it on a regular basis. The absence of McGrath and Warne has had a high cost in that area.

In Jamaica overnight, Steve Harmison routed the West Indies, taking 7-12 as the Windies collapsed for 47, going down by 10 wickets after 3 days of close cricket. Rule Britannia!

South Africa and New Zealand went for the draw. The match was interesting in that Kallis scored a century – which means that he has scored one in each of his last five matches (but still finds himself at number 3 on the PWC ratings, just behind Hayden and Dravid)! And also for the NZ fight back – chasing 469, the Kiwis were 6-225 and still hadn’t avoided the follow on. In the end they took the first innings lead, making a very impressive 509 with an unbeaten 119 from Jacob Oram and fifties from McCullum and Vettori.

India beat Pakistan in the first ODI in a high scoring thriller. The scores were 7/349 to 8/344. For India, Dravid made 99 from 104 balls but it was Inzi taking MOTM honours in a losing side, making 122 from 102 balls.

Spectacular action!

Deck of cards

Muttiah Muralitharan bagged his 40th “five for” as he drew level with Shane Warne on 491 Test wickets, having taken 6-62 in Australia’s modest first innings of 220. The last four went down like a deck of cards for just four runs. This followed Lehmann and Warne temporarily righting the ship before tea after Australia lost 3-15.

There were plenty of starts but only Lehmann passed fifty as he showed his class against spin, scoring 62.

The Aussies will get 90 minutes at the Sri Lankans tonight and it will be an important period of the match.

For the record, Symonds, who in my opinion, inexplicably replaced the in-form Katich, made a patient duck from 15 balls.

Ripper.