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Some day my Ashwell will come

Submitted by rickeyre on January 5, 2006 - 2:23am

It was great to see Ashwell Prince bring up that century at the SCG yesterday, if only to see a South African with personality do so well...

The partnership of 219 for the fourth wicket between Prince and Kallis, though a little slow by contemporary Test standards, has put South Africa in the box seat for this game, and let's face it, it's healthy for the sport any time Australia is made to struggle these days.

Watching Shane Warne bowl to Prince yesterday gave me this perverse image of the same bowler with a slightly plumper girth and longer blond hair being smashed around by Ravi Shastri on this same ground fourteen years ago, almost to the day.

On the morning of Day Three, the start of play (at the absurdly early TV-driven hour of 10am) has been delayed. It's gloomy and overcast in Sydney and barely drizzling. Goodness, if this were Old Trafford or Headingley they'd be saying conditions are ideal for cricket!

I feel a sense of parochialism about visiting batsmen who score centuries in SCG Tests (even though I haven't been out to the ground yet this week!). This was Ashwell Prince's third Test century in his fifteenth outing for South Africa. As this CricInfo Statsguru query of his Test innings shows, however, he needs to get a few more solid starts under his belt.
The state of play at the moment is that Australia need 198 runs to avoid the follow on with seven wickets in hand. Ponting will be joined at the crease by Hussey when play starts, with Symonds and Gilchrist to follow. Pollock, Langeveldt and Nel have it all ahead of them today.