Geoff Lemon's Blog, page 27
June 9, 2023
World Test Championship final: Australia v India, day three – live
40th over: India 157-6 (Rahane 30, Thakur 4) Cummins from the Pavilion End, and he’s also hitting a length and getting the ball to jag in. Rahane squeezes out a single off the inside edge. Thakur rides the bounce for two, then flashes outside off and is lucky to survive.
39th over: India 154-6 (Rahane 30, Thakur 2) That is such a Boland over. Wicket second ball. Cuts it in and smashes the gloves and body from the next couple. Then has a catch dropped at third slip! A tough one, over Khawaja’s head. He goes up with the ball, gets fingertips to it but tips it over the bar. Two runs result.
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June 8, 2023
Beware, England: Steve Smith looks like a batting immortal again | Geoff Lemon
Australian’s dominant century in the World Test Championship final against India strikes an ominous note before the Ashes
From time to time around the Oval press box, little English-accented groans of annoyance burbled through the quiet. “Oh God. Here we go again.” Steve Smith was the cause, across the first two days of the World Test Championship final. Through the tinted windows placed just behind the bowler’s arm at the Vauxhall End was the perfect view of him, ball after ball: setting up outside leg stump, stepping across, nudging off his pads for a run on his way to 121.
For British scribes who covered their last home Ashes in 2019, it was simply Smith picking up where he left off. They saw him do exactly that to the tune of 774 runs last time around, and any time your tally equals an ABC radio callsign you’re doing well. They can’t believe that between that series and now Smith returned to the realm of batting mortals. They can look at the numbers – 28 Tests, four centuries – but they can’t quite believe what they weren’t there to see.
Continue reading...World Test Championship final: Australia v India, day two – as it happened
Australia took control on day two at the Oval by reducing India to 151 for five, a deficit of 318
89th over: Australia 345-3 (Smith 105, Head 153) The first boundary of the day for Head, leaning back and placing his cut shot behind point from Shami. He gives a modest wave and nothing more for the applause greeting his 150 – quite right, Travis, it is a nonsense milestone. Get a double ton and salute that. He tries a similar shot next ball and gets one more run. Smith glances another.
88th over: Australia 338-3 (Smith 104, Head 148) Siraj works away, and after that early flurry Smith goes back into his defensive mode from yesterday. The only run is a wide from a high bouncer. India’s quicks really have not got the length on this pitch, most of the short balls yesterday went sailing over. And the umpires ignored most of those yesterday, but this one is called today.
Continue reading...World Test Championship final: Australia v India, day two – live
89th over: Australia 345-3 (Smith 105, Head 153) The first boundary of the day for Head, leaning back and placing his cut shot behind point from Shami. He gives a modest wave and nothing more for the applause greeting his 150 – quite right, Travis, it is a nonsense milestone. Get a double ton and salute that. He tries a similar shot next ball and gets one more run. Smith glances another.
88th over: Australia 338-3 (Smith 104, Head 148) Siraj works away, and after that early flurry Smith goes back into his defensive mode from yesterday. The only run is a wide from a high bouncer. India’s quicks really have not got the length on this pitch, most of the short balls yesterday went sailing over. And the umpires ignored most of those yesterday, but this one is called today.
Continue reading...June 7, 2023
Australia’s Head-start changes emphasis and puts India to the sword | Geoff Lemon
When Travis Head arrived at the Oval crease, his side were in a precarious position – now they will enter day two well in charge
Test it out quietly to yourself, because it is not yet a fully formed idea. One to be rolled over the tongue to see how it goes before it is released. But maybe, at least at this moment, Travis Head is Australia’s most important Test batter.
This is not an idea born of his run-a-ball century in the World Test Championship final, when he took Australia from precarity to primacy against India at the Oval. It was when that century was still just a threat, on 28 from 18 balls shortly after Marnus Labuschagne had been clean bowled by Mohammed Shami.
Continue reading...June 6, 2023
Reward or redemption? World Test Championship final looks entirely different for Australia and India | Geoff Lemon
While the two nations face off at The Oval, cricket fans will also be wondering about the future of the fixture
Soon it will arrive: not just the second Test of the English summer, but the second edition of the World Test Championship final. As Australia and India prepare to play off in London, the match’s place and placement remain strange. It is new enough that people are not sure of its significance, and the supposed pinnacle of a two-year contest takes place only days before the next edition begins with an Ashes series that for many is more anticipated.
For Australia’s team the final is two things. First, reward for a solid two years of qualifying that saw only three losses out of 19, headed by a hard-fought series win across 15 days in Pakistan, as well as a home Ashes thrashing, a shared result in Sri Lanka, and a visit to India that became more credible as it went on. Second, it is essentially a free hit, a first swing at a title that Australia has never contested and has no blueprint on how to approach.
Continue reading...June 3, 2023
Australia’s David Warner to retire from all three cricket formats over next year
David Warner has laid out his ideal plan for retirement across Australian cricket’s three formats, the opener eyeing a hometown Sydney Test farewell in January. That would follow an exit from one-day cricket at the 50-over World Cup in November, before carrying on in the shortest form until the T20 World Cup in June 2024.
“That’s pending on what you guys write, and whether the selectors pick me,” he told reporters at Australia’s training ground in Beckenham before the World Test Championship final against India at the Oval, beginning on Wednesday, and the Ashes series to follow.
Continue reading...David Warner to retire from Test cricket in 2023-24 summer
David Warner has laid out his ideal plan for retirement across Australian cricket’s three formats, the opener eyeing a hometown Sydney Test farewell this coming January. That would follow an exit from one-day cricket at the 50-over World Cup the previous November, before carrying on in the shortest form until the T20 World Cup in June 2024.
“That’s pending on what you guys write, and whether the selectors pick me,” he told reporters at Australia’s training ground in Beckenham ahead of the World Test Championship final against India in London this week and the Ashes series to follow.
Continue reading...May 26, 2023
ICC revenue deal set to overlook chance to grow game in favour of enriching richest | Geoff Lemon
A proposed new split of global cricket broadcast money is massively skewed in India’s favour but the move would be against the BCCI’s own interests
When India’s cricket board first tried to take hold of International Cricket Council finances in 2014, it enlisted support. The BCCI was flanked in the attempt by Cricket Australia and the England and Wales Board – the so-called Big Three arguing that as the dominant financial entities in the international game, they should divide the proceeds between themselves.
The attempt only ended with change inside Indian cricket, when reformist administrator Shashank Manohar ousted a tainted predecessor. But Manohar is long gone, and today’s cronies have an appetite awakened by a reported new four-year broadcast deal for ICC events worth north of US$3bn, an increase of more than threefold per year. As any kid watching cartoons knows, henchmen are expendable as the stakes rise. This time the BCCI is going solo, carving out Australia and England along with everyone else. This time the attempt will succeed.
Continue reading...May 19, 2023
The Ashes without Jofra Archer will burn a little less brightly for Australians too | Geoff Lemon
The bowler’s pace and style will be sorely missed, as will the highly anticipated rematch with Steve Smith and company
If you started following cricket recently, you might wonder why the fuss about Jofra Archer missing this year’s Ashes. A player with 13 Tests for England, the last well over two years ago, and 42 wickets averaging 31. Those who watched four years ago will know why Archer is imprinted on an Australian cricket consciousness as firmly as on England’s. His earlier work in Australia’s domestic T20 league had already introduced an incredible athlete in the field and a force with the ball. Then he showed up in the second Ashes match of 2019 in place of the injured Jimmy Anderson.
Weeks earlier he had won England a first men’s World Cup, a nerveless yorker from the last ball of a deciding Super Over keeping Martin Guptill to one run when New Zealand needed two. It deservedly sits atop Archer’s highlight reel. But in the age of T20 proliferation, finding a bowler who can deliver one ball under pressure to end a game is possible. Far more rare is one who can do what he did on Test debut at Lord’s.
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