Geoff Lemon's Blog, page 18
September 24, 2023
India v Australia: second one-day international – live
2nd over: India 14-0 (Shubman Gill 1, Ruturaj Gaikwad 8) Back of a length immediately from Josh Hazlewood, sprinting in with an orange flannel hanging out of the back of his banana trousers. And on the money he remains.
Interestingly, or not, depending on the strength of your morning coffee, to add to the link with yesterday’s ODI between England and Ireland and today’s India v Australia warm-up ,Ruturaj Gaikwad has the highest List A average in the history of the sport but Sam Hain, who made 89 for England yesterday, is breathing down his neck.
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September 23, 2023
AFL 2023 preliminary final: Brisbane Lions beat Carlton Blues – as it happened
1st quarter, 19 remaining: Brisbane 0.0.0 – Carlton 1.0.6
Early goal for Carlton! It could have been Brisbane. Berry on the half-forward flank surges to the 50 and kicks long, but is pinged for running too far. The umpire has a point there. Turns the ball over, and from a contest off half back the ball breaks Carlton’s way, a quick surge through the middle and over the top to Cottrell running back towards goal. The 50 is empty, and he has a headstart on the defenders to run within 20 metres and slot it through.
Continue reading...September 20, 2023
Giants bring new romance to freshen up the AFL’s reheated nostalgia | Geoff Lemon
Carlton, Collingwood and Brisbane may have longer histories but after 12 seasons GWS have a claim to sentiment of their own
Just before 11pm a few nights ago, Lygon Street was dead for a Friday. A few scattered tables of people along the restaurant strip. No hordes of students trailing from the pubs to cheap pizza at Intersection Cafe. Tiamo was closed, dark wood panels blended with the shadows. The blacktop of the road empty aside from an occasional rideshare cab drifting past like a reef fish scouring the coral. Then as we topped the hill from Elgin towards the cemetery: “Baggers!” screeched a woman on a rental bike who went careening past on the sliver of remaining footpath. She lurched up to the crossing, almost crashing into a couple of gormless young men waiting on rental scooters. For a beat, the three of them stared at one another. “Baggers!” she crowed again, and weaved off towards the green light.
Yes, the Blues were in the prelim. That was the first Carlton support we had seen on the suburb’s main street except a few men out the front of University Cafe, watching a TV through the window of one of Lygon’s dwindling band of Italian institutions. They must have erupted when Blake Acres scrubbed his kick to the good side of the post with under a minute to play. Within an hour they were no longer alone, an impromptu parade leaving the scene of victory at the MCG to stream back to the heartland. Drums, flags, chants, and above all, the look of disbelief. The football writer Martin Flanagan caught it: “When an old club comes from nowhere and a whole section of the city bursts into life like a paddock coming alive with daffodils.”
Continue reading...September 10, 2023
England beat New Zealand by 79 runs in second men’s ODI – as it happened
Rohit Sharma has gone up several gears, battering three sixes in quick time from Shadab Khan’s spin. Both Indian openers are into the 50s.
“Allow me to be the 2,516th reader to point out that Conway and Mitchell also clearly like batting in Wales, given that Friday’s match took place amid the pleasant surrounds of Sophia Gardens in Cardiff.”
Continue reading...England v New Zealand: start of second men’s ODI delayed by rain – live
Rohit Sharma has gone up several gears, battering three sixes in quick time from Shadab Khan’s spin. Both Indian openers are into the 50s.
“Allow me to be the 2,516th reader to point out that Conway and Mitchell also clearly like batting in Wales, given that Friday’s match took place amid the pleasant surrounds of Sophia Gardens in Cardiff.”
Continue reading...August 6, 2023
Glorious English summer hustle has been an Ashes rush like no other | Geoff Lemon
As the light fades on my journey – from Lauren Filer on another plane to Stuart Broad’s Oval exit – joy at an epic series lingers
You know you’re getting on a bit when you gesture towards how things used to be. It doesn’t have to become that special mix of nostalgia and resentment that can distil in later life, just a measure of distance. You’re farther along the line, looking back at youth as something that happened rather than living within it as the only state you’ve known.
My first Ashes tour was in 2013, and it was shoestring deluxe, from random couch-surfing hosts to the floors of backpacker friends, stashing free sandwiches at tea breaks and scanning the pub for cold chips. Even so, the trip was pure discovery, bursts of activity in the longueurs of a glorious English summer, where the leaves glow with that golden green to the point of bursting, the sun that illuminates your pint but stays gentle on your neck.
Continue reading...July 31, 2023
Australia should feel disappointment keenly having blown Ashes lead | Geoff Lemon
Alex Carey and Todd Murphy revived the chance of another miracle until probability finally caught up with the tourists
Once more with feeling. Of course, it had to come down to this. Another dramatic session, another bright streak of energy fizzing end to end through an afternoon. Another hour of insides squirming and crawling into knots, a prickle in fingertips and a jiggle in knees. Australia and England, the fifth afternoon of the fifth Test, runs ticking down as wickets crashed, another of those finishes, the possible and the impossible blurring in and out of focus.
After the half-formed belting at Manchester, a fourth-Test disaster for Australia averted by rain, some supporters piled in. Others were ready if a loss followed at the Oval. Some will go right ahead. But while there will be deep disappointment at the middle-order slide when the match was really lost, it would be bitter to be resentful after the brave last stand assembled by Alex Carey and Todd Murphy, reviving the chance of another miracle as Australians hoped and the English fretted.
Continue reading...July 30, 2023
Australia play ball before Khawaja and Warner seize Ashes narrative | Geoff Lemon
After spending the third day sleepwalking round the Oval, Australia grew more decisive before the rain stopped play
It should have been too much. Five Ashes contests, six Test matches, just over seven weeks, right at the tail end of all, a visiting team that was done. The Australians had spent the third day groping around the field like sleepwalkers headed to the fridge who ended up in the laundry closet, and early the next were set 384 to win. England had enjoyed the emotional burnish of Stuart Broad’s retirement announcement, having been given the entire third evening and fourth morning to polish the idol.
Australia played ball, lining up in a guard of honour as he came down the steps to bat with his offsider Jimmy Anderson, the teams putting on a couple of overs to give Broad a chance to hit one final six in a career that has featured 55 of them. That should have been that, Australia waiting to be overwhelmed by the task at hand and the workload preceding it before buckling the Ashes trophy into its own airline seat and bringing it home at 2-2.
Continue reading...July 29, 2023
Australia out of ideas and slapped around the chops in final Ashes Test | Geoff Lemon
Tourists pay dearly for belief that if they bowled their normal stuff, a normal England innings would follow
As the 2023 Ashes moved to within two days of its scheduled close, there was no escaping the reality for Australia that it was happening again. That feeling of being slapped around the chops, too dazed to get the thread of what to do next. England with the bat running the game in their own way, setting the terms that Australia had to respond to. This, above all, has been the idea behind Bazball: not all about hitting sixes or bowling bouncers, but making opponents react rather than act.
It was there on the first day of the series at Edgbaston, when England made 393 in audacious style before declaring within sight of stumps, but the eight wickets that Australia took that day made it feel like the visitors had just about kept control. It was there on the final day at Lord’s as Ben Stokes hit six after six, but that time felt like Australia had enough of a cushion to withstand a big hundred, and so it proved.
Continue reading...July 28, 2023
Khawaja’s anti-Bazball embodies a timeless clash of philosophies | Geoff Lemon
Australia’s opener has made caution his Ashes strategy and perhaps his obduracy induced fatigue in a depleted England attack
Across this entire Ashes series, it has felt like a contest of philosophies as much as a contest of teams. England have done a fair bit of talking, and had a lot more talking done on their behalf, about their adventurous style of play and how it is upending Test cricket norms. Australia have insisted that they don’t care about England’s style and will carry on with convention. In the first two Tests England’s insistence on delivering on the talk verged on being performative, and to their own detriment. In the fifth Test Australia might have done something the same.
The man who has embodied the conflict has been Usman Khawaja. When the series began at Edgbaston, after England’s helter-skelter opening day included 393 runs and a declaration, Khawaja went the opposite way. He faced 321 balls in the first innings, 197 in the second, pressing forward with the softest hands and defusing each delivery. As England tried to heat the game up, making its molecules bounce with agitation, Khawaja was the cold compress, the only sound a slow hiss of steam as he took temperature out of the match.
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