Geoff Lemon's Blog, page 47
December 17, 2021
Ashes 2021-22: second Test, day two – as it happened!
The last bits of warm-up equipment get ferried off the ground. A couple of kids holding flags wait at the end of the players’ races. A few uninterested security guards dot the boundary. The big remote-control camera buggy prowls the outfield like a dystopian sentinel. Black Mirror cricket is about to begin.
The walk down through Adelaide’s central city to the ground was slightly more intense today than yesterday. Wouldn’t fancy bowling 30 overs of pace in it.
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December 16, 2021
Australia and England enter Ashes twilight zone – The Final Word podcast
Emma John offers her thoughts on day one of the second Test before Adam Collins and Geoff Lemon share their views from Adelaide
Welcome to Adelaide, where day is night and night is day.
Emma looks back as England go for an all-pace attack and leave out their fastest bowler, while Australia react to Pat Cummins being ruled out by being pinged as a close Covid contact.
Continue reading...Australia relieved Cummins’ Covid contact does not seem to hit too hard | Geoff Lemon
England endured a grim Ashes day in the field despite seeing their opposing captain ruled out hours before the second Test
With great regularity across several decades of men’s Ashes cricket, England’s tours to Australia have seemingly been cursed by luck. There was Simon Jones and his knee, Steven Harmison and his yips, Chris Silverwood and his playing career. Coin tosses lost when they hurt most, won when they would have been better avoided. Coming to Australia to win was hard enough, but the dark hand of fate would still see fit to intervene.
For a couple of hours on Thursday morning Adelaide time, fate settled on a different target. That was when the news came through that the Australian captain, Pat Cummins, though fit, was ruled out of the imminent Test match after being identified as a close contact of a positive Covid-19 case. Through those pre-match warm-ups, through the early anticipation, some English minds would have wondered if this was a series turning point, the new version of Glenn McGrath rolling an ankle at Edgbaston in 2005.
Continue reading...Ashes 2021-22: Australia v England second Test, day one – as it happened
Australia dominated the opening day of the second Ashes Test as England toiled in the field and Jos Buttler put down a straightforward late catch
Smith takes captaincy as Cummins ruled out amid Covid drama“Let’s not ask why some idiot was at a restaurant when he should have been in quarantine awaiting his test results,” writes in Peter Hutchinson.
I’m not sure what the details around the rules and the case are there, so I’ll hold fire before I start sledging anyone.
December 15, 2021
England can expect a hard day’s night in the second Ashes Test | Geoff Lemon
Do the pink-ball matches offer the tourists their best chance of a win over Australia? Previous results suggest otherwise
It is curious how an idea can become accepted as a general truth. For months leading up to this Ashes series, one of the tenets largely accepted by punditry has been that the Adelaide day-night Test would be England’s best chance of getting into the series with a win. When the fifth Test at Perth was moved to Hobart, the framing became whether this second day-night match – without having seen the first – would tilt things even more in England’s favour.
The concept is that the pink ball and the evening conditions can offer more chance of making the ball swing and seam and that England have bowlers skilled at making use of that. None of this is untrue. It also doesn’t at all factor in that England have played day-night matches four times, beating only a bewildered West Indies in an Arctic version of Birmingham before being pummelled in Adelaide, Auckland and Ahmedabad.
Continue reading...December 12, 2021
Weaknesses remain in Australia’s Ashes armour despite crushing win | Geoff Lemon
Many expect a whitewash but this series may end up being closer than widely thought if England rally as Joe Root intends
“I’m not just trying to make things up. I genuinely believe that if we’d taken our chances better, and handled that first innings better, we could be sat here in a very different position.” It would be easy to disparage Joe Root’s post-defeat comments as obvious and not useful, but the England captain’s press conference was one of his stronger displays.
Root’s media appearances can often be limp, conciliatory towards nothing in particular, couching each defeat in terms of lessons that England need to learn while leading a team that never learns them. In the Carl Rackemann Indoor Centre beneath the Gabba, next to the nets and the workout equipment, Root was exercised, punchy, obviously deeply frustrated with that opening Ashes loss.
Continue reading...Weaknesses remain in Australia’s Ashes armour despite crushing win
Many now expect a whitewash but this series may end up being closer than widely thought if England target hosts’ weaknesses
“I’m not just trying to make things up. I genuinely believe that if we’d taken our chances better, and handled that first innings better, we could be sat here in a very different position.”
It would be easy to disparage Joe Root’s post-Brisbane comments as obvious and not useful, but the England captain’s press conference was one of his stronger displays. Root’s media appearances can often be limp, conciliatory towards nothing in particular, couching each defeat in terms of lessons that England need to learn while leading a team that never learns them. In the Carl Rackemann Indoor Centre beneath the Gabba, next to the nets and the workout equipment, Root was exercised, punchy, obviously deeply frustrated with that opening Ashes loss.
Continue reading...December 11, 2021
Australia snuff out England’s new hope at the Ashes – The Final Word podcast
Emma John offers her thoughts on day four of the first Test before Adam Collins and Geoff Lemon share their views from the Gabba
If you saw day one, then you don’t need much help to picture day four. Or want to, if you’re an England fan. But Emma does, despite the Gabba’s power failure.
Adam and Geoff then rue the absence of a fifth day, hailing Nathan Lyon’s 400 and Australia’s early series lead.
Continue reading...December 10, 2021
Nathan Lyon spins his way into the 400 club – eventually | Geoff Lemon
After racing his way to 390 Test wickets, Nathan Lyon was forced to wait almost two years to pass 400
In January 2020 the world was a different place. The Australian men’s Test team had burned through a home summer against Pakistan and New Zealand - double centuries, triple centuries, innings victories, the works. Nathan Lyon, Australia’s off-spinner, finished it in style in the Sydney Test. Five wickets in the first innings, five in the second, 10 for 113 in the match, 27 for the season, and up to 390 in his career. Just around the corner lay 400, that huge milestone that at the time had only been passed by 15 players.
Then the world was turned upside down. Australia’s next Test engagement in Bangladesh was cancelled, a place where Lyon took 22 wickets in two matches on his previous visit. Not in any overseas T20 leagues, he spent the winter cooling his heels. He played three Sheffield Shield matches towards the end of the year with plenty of overs returning nine wickets for 392 runs. Then it was into a series against India, the specialists against spin.
Continue reading...Travis Head plays fast and loose with England but runs out of support | Geoff Lemon
Australia batsman knows only one way to play and his 150 at the Gabba was a classic of the genre with sixes and risks taken
Perhaps it has had its time, but a staple of cricket commentary used to be nominating which player you would like to bat for your life. For those of my vintage, it was always Steve Waugh. Chewing gum, trudging, plonking his bundle of baggy green rags on his head, Waugh would rake his flat stare over a pitch and an opposing team as if he would literally rather die than give them his wicket. He kept his average above 50 by sheer force of will. He came across as the ultimate obdurate bastard, the man who broke Jason Gillespie’s leg with his own face.
If you were playing the Bat For Your Life sweepstakes, a player you would be terrified to draw would be Travis Head. A one-way ticket out of the Hunger Games for you. If Waugh epitomised obduracy, Head has epitomised looseness, constantly fiddling around off stump like a teenager who has just discovered the habit. He has hopped and chopped and prodded. Even his strike rotation to length balls uses an angled bat, risk where none is needed. He may not be the only player caught twice in a Test match off a top edge at deep third man, but they could probably fit in one carriage on a Ferris wheel.
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