Has Australia blown its best chance of regaining the Ashes?
I'm serious.
Honestly, what was the point of batting on just long enough on Sunday morning to allow Justin Langer to get his hundred? Apart from allowing Ricky to strain his back while taking a run and thus keeping him off the field for the rest of the day... and possibly for the Second Test.
Do you think Ricky Ponting has enough confidence in his team? How big a target will he set England before he can breathe easily at the thought that the opposition can't win? Will 700 be enough? Maybe he'll bat till tea-time Sunday and hope that even Australia's bowlers can contain Strauss and Cook to less than 800 runs in four sessions.
There's one who is following a noble tradition...
Australia 602/9, England 53/3. We've been there before. Many times.
What if Freddie had won the toss yesterday? And said "this pitch has a bit of life in it, we'll bowl first"? Yeah well, what if he decided to have a bat? Maybe they would have gotten 400 and felt happy with themselves.
Instead, they batted second... starting about an hour before stumps on the second day. They might make 400. In fact, they need 403 to avoid the follow-on. That's not looking too good right now.
Just over an hour of bedtime listening late last night for me, with MP3 audio summaries from the ABC, BBC, Guardian, Telegraph and CricInfo. The BBC, Guardian and Telegraph are all producing special daily podcast programs.
The ABC's Ashes podcast feed consists of a collection of four clips, being the stumps summary, two press conference interview and a radio highlights package. All of the ABC's material is also available for download from the Cricket Australia site (which does not have a podcast feed).
The Midwinter-Midwinter is back for 2006-07: The rickeyre.com Ashes Best On Ground award. Just like an MVP, except it's a BoG...
To update what I said on the announcement of the 2005 Award, you can take your Border-Gavaskar, Compton-Miller, Chappell-Hadlee, even your Peden-Archdale... I am now presenting my award for the Ashes Player of the Tournament.
Presenting: the Midwinter-Midwinter. Who needs to invoke the names of two legends when you can honour one person twice?
Marcus Trescothick is one of my favourite cricketers of the last few years, and it's sad to see that's he is out of the Ashes series with what is apparently a recurrence of a depressive illness. Let's hope he does return to the England team once he is well enough. It was good to see a broad consensus of sympathy towards Trescothick among Australian fans this week after the news broke.
This just in from Cricket Australia:
Fifth 3 mobile Ashes Test (SCG) SOLD OUT
The general public ticket allocation to the Fifth 3 mobile Ashes Test match at the SCG has sold out within 40 minutes this morning.
Tickets all matches in Sydney, including days 1 - 4 of the Test match, went on sale from 9am today through Ticketek (via web, over the phone and through outlets).
A small amount of tickets still remain to the other international matches scheduled for the SCG this summer including:
- Aus v Eng, Twenty20, 9 Jan 2007
- Aus v NZ, ODI, 21 Jan 2007
- Aus v Eng, ODI, 2 Feb
- Second ODI Final
For additional ticketing information, please visit www.cricket.com.au.
Looks like I'm not.
Duly registered as a member of the Australian Cricket Family, I logged onto the Cricket Australia website at 9am this morning to try and get some tickets for the Sydney Test against England in January. The link took me through to Ticketek's booking website, which told me:
Thank you for visiting Ticketek.com, tickets to a major event have gone on sale today!
Due to a major event going on sale, the website is currently experiencing high demand.
And is still telling me that at 11.40am. And no, I'm not one of those dweebs who hits reload continuously over and over. A more civilised every two or three minutes while I get on with life seemed just as productive for me.
Meanwhile, Cricket Australia announced at 11am that "The ticket allocation to the Australian Cricket Family has been exhausted for days 1-4 of the Sydney Test."
Mind you, I can apparently still get tickets to the Twenty20 game and the three one-dayers. If I can ever get onto the Ticketek website. Fat chance.
There will be a further allocation of tickets available to the general public from June 19. Good luck if you're not one of the Barmitia Militia.
Personal grumbling aside, it's fabulous news for the sport that tickets to any cricket, let alone Test cricket, can be this popular.
