Geoff Lemon's Blog, page 4

South Africa v Australia: World Test Championship final cricket, day two – as it happened

For the second day in a row, ball dominated bast as 14 wickets fell with Australia holding a nervy lead of 218.

25th over: South Africa 55-4: Bavuma 14, Bedingham 9 Aaaand smoked! Bavuma finally lays into one, after a very cautious innings yesterday. Through the covers for four. Then tucks up and drops a run to mid off, sprints and yells “Yep, yep, yep!” Positive batting. The team 50 comes up. Bedingham perplexingly reaches for a wide ball, looking to squeeze it into the turf, when he didn’t need to play, but gets a run from the next ball, tapped to mid off. Labuschagne there is the fielder they’re milking runs to: he’s a fierce pick-up-and-throw merchant if they get a call wrong. Round the wicket goes Starc, left arm, and Bavuma smokes him for four more! Through point this time, lofted but there’s a deep backward point, so no danger. And it beats that man on his square side. Ten from the over.

24th over: South Africa 45-4: Bavuma 5, Bedingham 8 Hazlewood now, from the Paviliion End, getting the ball to jag down the hill and tenderise Bedingham’s thigh pad. Nasty. Two slips, plus the extra lanky figure of Webster at gully, watching Hazlewood zip the ball past the outside edge.

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South Africa v Australia: World Test Championship final cricket, day two – live

Updates from the second day of the WTC final at Lord’s

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25th over: South Africa 55-4: Bavuma 14, Bedingham 9 Aaaand smoked! Bavuma finally lays into one, after a very cautious innings yesterday. Through the covers for four. Then tucks up and drops a run to mid off, sprints and yells “Yep, yep, yep!” Positive batting. The team 50 comes up. Bedingham perplexingly reaches for a wide ball, looking to squeeze it into the turf, when he didn’t need to play, but gets a run from the next ball, tapped to mid off. Labuschagne there is the fielder they’re milking runs to: he’s a fierce pick-up-and-throw merchant if they get a call wrong. Round the wicket goes Starc, left arm, and Bavuma smokes him for four more! Through point this time, lofted but there’s a deep backward point, so no danger. And it beats that man on his square side. Ten from the over.

24th over: South Africa 45-4: Bavuma 5, Bedingham 8 Hazlewood now, from the Paviliion End, getting the ball to jag down the hill and tenderise Bedingham’s thigh pad. Nasty. Two slips, plus the extra lanky figure of Webster at gully, watching Hazlewood zip the ball past the outside edge.

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Cricket’s world showdown finally lives up to its billing on thrilling first day

Grumbles about formats and venues are forgotten as first South Africa’s quicks, and then Australia’s, make hay in Lord’s sunshine

Over the week of lead-up to its third staging, the World Test Championship final has felt increasingly like something that counts. After two abandoned attempts to host it at Lord’s, having been diverted first to the Hampshire Bowl and then to The Oval, it is finally being held at cricket’s original headquarters. On the first day of the match, with a surge of people up St John’s Wood Road, whether for a sensible start time of 10.30am or spilling over into an occasionally sunny afternoon, forming an eventual crowd of more than 26,000, this at last felt like vindication of concept.

Of course, cricket being cricket, this also means that the game’s biggest interests are right now lining up to sabotage it. The Indian board plans to take the next final to their cavern in Ahmedabad, where about 13 people will show up to watch, especially if it’s a neutral fixture. Even India Tests when Virat Kohli was playing drew paltry crowds there. Partly their move will be motivated by a thirst for prestige, partly by India having already lost two finals in England. It is comically being framed as a “bid”, while everyone in cricket knows that that the BCCI does not do any bidding, but only has its bidding done.

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Incongruity of World Test Championship final fails to dampen Australian excitement | Geoff Lemon

It may be a strange time of year for an Australian, and a strange tournament structure, but the decider is vindicated further each time it is played

In Australia it is winter, and it is footy season. AFL, NRL, the works. The autumn was passing strange, with unnervingly high temperatures and the Gold Coast Suns in the top four. But now it is June, and feeling more as it should, with nights in the southern half of the continent dipping deep into single degrees. The Raiders must be breathing out steam on Canberra mornings, half remembering dreams of ending a premiership wait. And strangely positioned among all this, the Australia Test team is getting ready to play cricket.

Australian winter tours happen, but outside the occasional Asian or Caribbean jaunt this century, they’re confined to quadrennial visits to England. Two years ago, the first time Australia qualified for a World Test Championship final, that match came directly before an Ashes series. As well as turning the supposed culmination into an incongruous appetizer, it also made the WTC final melt into the Ashes summer.

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Ange and the Boss: the Australian title and ties that bind Postecoglou and Puskás

There is emotional and cultural heft to the story revealed in a film about the Hungarian football great’s time as coach of South Melbourne Hellas

Based on a blur of childhood memory that hardly equals sociology, Australia in the 1980s and 90s was a place obsessed with celebrity. A small population at the far end of the world, a gap unbridged by cheap flights and eternal internet: when famous people came to visit, it was a huge deal.

When Australians got involved in major events overseas, even bigger. There were years when Nicole Kidman just showing up at the Oscars felt like a national event. So it’s a hell of a story that one of the world’s greatest footballers coached a local soccer team in 1991, and hardly anybody noticed.

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Virat Kohli steers India past Australia and into Champions Trophy final

Australia 264 all out; India 267-6 in DubaiVeteran’s 84 takes his team to four-wicket victory

Many changes of personnel, one simple change of sequence. The World Cup final in 2023 began with Pat Cummins choosing to give Australia’s bowlers the chance to choke India’s batting. A year and a half later, in the Champions Trophy, Steve Smith as injury substitute decided that a very different Australian team should bat first.

Late-career struggles or no, Virat Kohli is one-day cricket’s greatest chaser. And while a miniature tournament semi-final in Dubai is not an equal trade for a World Cup decider in a packed house at home, there will be partial catharsis for this India side beating Australia in a global tournament knockout.

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Australia into Champions Trophy semis after washout against Afghanistan

Points shared after rain halts Australia’s chase of 274Afghanistan hopes rest on England crushing South Africa

Australia went through to the Champions Trophy semi-final thanks to a no-result in the Lahore rain on Friday night, but looked well on track to get there on their own dime against Afghanistan before the abandonment for a wet outfield 12.5 overs into their chase. According to statisticians, that is too early to use the recalculation formula to award a win, but even those with a far more basic grasp of mathematics could see that 109 was an awfully long way towards a target of 274, and one wicket down was not a factor. With Travis Head rampaging on 59 from 40 balls, Australia were going at 8.5 an over and needed 4.5 from there.

Still, it was a shame not to at least see the possibility of a twist via Afghanistan’s spinners, with Rashid Khan not getting a bowl before the rain. There was extra frisson around this game given it was the first ODI between the sides since the Maxwell miracle at Mumbai in 2023, when the Australian all-rounder became the only player ever to make a double century in the second innings of a one-day game. This time around he wasn’t required to face a ball, though he contributed a very tidy 1 for 28 as a bowler in the first innings.

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Washout leaves Australia set for last four but potentially short of game time | Geoff Lemon

They should beat Afghanistan to progress, but the batters would have benefited from a hit-out against South Africa

If you were an Australian supporter of a certain pragmatic bent, you might be quite pleased with a washout against South Africa at the Champions Trophy. With a win already banked, you slide past your most dangerous opponent in Group B without having conceded any advantage to them. It leaves you level with them on three points and guaranteed a semi-final as long as you can beat an Afghanistan team that, despite their recent advancements and the memorably close result last time you played an ODI against, you should still beat any time, anywhere across a format as extended as 50 overs.

If you’re an Australian supporter of the sort of bullishness natural to Australian supporters, including any past or current Australian player, you would say that you always want to play the best teams because you’ll beat them while having a grand old time in the process, and that sliding past your most dangerous opponent is just a missed opportunity to bank a second win, go to four points, and all but guarantee your semi-final before the final group game against Afghanistan comes into it.

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Australia’s second tier up against it without big three at Champions Trophy | Geoff Lemon

Their attack has a distinctly Sheffield Shield flavour to it but the relative weakness of their group is in Australia’s favour

For a long time, a strange situation continued in Australian cricket. Through a one-day World Cup in 2023, through a T20 World Cup in 2024, through a Test summer that sat between them, and through the lead-ups and warm-ups before all of the above, the same three fast bowlers showed up almost all of the time. Mitchell Starc, Josh Hazlewood, Patrick Cummins, in aeternum.

Things don’t work that way. Fast bowling is a horrifically taxing art, and the mad operators who pursue it across any level of the game share a gruesome delight in cataloguing their lifetime’s injuries, discarding sneakers and peeling back socks and rolling up trouser legs to show you toes bent sideways or lurid half-moons of scars around ankles or knees. At the top level, fitness and availability are sporadic, and that’s before you come to the changes driven by each format requiring different skills. Australia’s big three have been men for all seasons, all styles, all conditions, in a remarkable show of consistency and adaptability.

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Sri Lanka v Australia: second men’s cricket Test, day three – as it happened

Australia need only two wickets and a bit of gusto from the top order to defeat Sri Lanka and claim a series whitewash

Gone! Steve Smith’s fantastic innings comes to an end and it takes a lovely ball to get rid of him. Pitching on off stump and drawing him into a defensive stroke, the ball gripped enough to take the edge and Kusal takes a nice catch up to the stumps. Smith nods his approval but still has to drag himself from the middle.

84th over: Australia 345-3 (Smith 131, Carey 143) Australia work the singles and hit the gaps for twos. Smith paddles and flicks and the lead approaches 100.

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