Sunday, December 26, 2010

Pinch me I must be dreaming

They start young in the Barmy Army
Melbourne Day 1: Australia 98 all out, England 157 for no wicket. Will this still be true when I wake up tomorrow?

My Day 1 prediction lies in tatters and I don't care. No-one walking to the MCG this morning could have imagined what would unfold before their eyes today. In short, this was the most absurdly one-sided day's cricket in living memory between England and Australia. And that includes when the Aussies were thrashing us for fun throughout the nineties.

Only the members of the esteemed Melbourne Cricket Club must have had a sense of foreboding abour their team's performance today. Their completely inexplicable and disgraceful absence today was responsible for the shortfall of up to 10,000 spectators versus pre-match expectations. Instead of the world record crowd which was predicted in some quarters, the official attendence was just above 85,000. Still an astonishing number but ultimately well shy of a new record.

So, where did all go wrong for Australia? Well, many people have speculated where Australia would be in this series without the batting contributions of Hussey, Watson and Haddin. Today we found out just what can happen when these players fail to score runs. First Chris Tremlett, then Jimmy Anderson and Tim Bresnan all found prodigious swing and seam movement under overcast skies after Andrew Strauss won the toss and invited Australia to bat for the second successive match. The bowlers were backed up by another great display of close catching, with all ten wickets falling to catches behind the wicket, including six taken by England wicketkeeper Matt Prior.

An England performance fit for royalty
Yet by the time England batted from mid-afternoon onwards, the pitch appeared to have lost much of its previous venom, enabling Strauss and Alastair Cook to proceed with relatively few alarms to 157 without loss, with a long day in the field surely awaiting Australia tomorrow as England look to build an enormous lead.

By the time both England openers reached their fifties, the crowd had already dwindled well below 50,000 as the Aussie supporters began to desert their failing team in droves. Others who remained behaved so badly - at least in the vicinity of an understandably triumphant Barmy Army - that they had to be escorted away by the local constabulary. Yes, it was an incredibly bad day for their team but the local supporters are showing themselves to be very poor losers. I intend to return to this theme in more detail in a subsequent post.

1 comment:

  1. Great photo with the kids! Can't be doing anything but enjoying it at the moment I'm sure
    Nicky xx

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