Geoff Lemon's Blog, page 5

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

Mitchell Starc and Nathan Lyon took three wickets each before Kusal Mendis led Sri Lanka’s fightback, scoring 59 not out

2nd over: Sri Lanka 5-0 (Nissanka 4, Karunaratne 1) Matt Kuhnemann from the other end. He serves up a full bunger to Karunaratne as a final Test gift to get off the mark. The batter swats away to the sweeper on the leg side boundary and will be glad to get down the non-striker’s end by the looks of it.

Kuhnemann looks dangerous right away! The new ball skids along the surface and pins Nissanka on the pad. Big appeal but it was missing leg… Even bigger appeal! This looks closer – struck on the back pad this time! Australia review but Nissanka survives – just – the ball was hitting leg stump but it was umpires call so the on field decision of not out stands.

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Australia in pursuit of perfection as Sri Lanka seek to learn from their mistakes | Geoff Lemon

After one dominant performance in Galle the tourists cannot rely on Sri Lanka bringing about their own downfall again in the second Test

What to do after an exercise in perfection? Australia’s men ran last week’s Test match in Galle as brutally as their counterpart women did in Melbourne, both teams completing a win by an innings and plenty within 90 seconds of one another last Saturday.

The ticked boxes for the men’s side can fill a page: rack up more than 600 batting first; blazing fifty for your pinch-hit opener who was picked to blaze fifties; huge hundred for your other opener who had been a long time without one; third hundred in four Tests for your resurgent talisman, the same guy who is temporary captain and pulls the reins as well as ever; ton on debut for your No 5 who was a conditions pick ahead of others already capped; comfortable not out for your keeper who might otherwise be threatened by the debutant; bowl the opposition out twice following on in barely 100 overs across the two innings; wickets for your sole quick in a ram-raid at the top; wickets for your veteran spinner conducting the middle; and nine in the match for your left-arm spinner who almost missed with a broken thumb.

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Mooney makes hay before Australia leave lame England in an Ashes spin | Geoff Lemon

Beth Mooney became first Australian woman to make centuries in all three formats with her Ashes ton at the MCG

Beth Mooney’s speciality has always been pacing an innings, so one might decide it was a smart example of that to reach stumps on day two on 98 not out. If you make a hundred on the same day as someone else’s bigger one, your effort will be overlooked. Instead of living in the shadow of Annabel Sutherland’s 163, Mooney returned on day three to notch her first Test century all on her own.

It wasn’t an easy hop from 98 to 100, with even the normally cool wicketkeeper-bat fraying as the England spinner Sophie Ecclestone teased at the thread. A ball past the outside edge, a running mix-up narrowly averted, beaten again, then finally a drive to find the two runs she needed, the milestone raised in the first over of the day.

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England’s eight dropped Ashes catches enough to make anyone feel sick | Geoff Lemon

Litany of errors in the field help Australia build a huge lead, with the visitors appearing mentally to be halfway home

We may as well start with a positive. Annabel Sutherland has for some time appeared to be a next-generation Ellyse Perry, similar not just in stature but in output and style. The resemblance comes most notably when batting in Tests, with the concentration and appetite to put away short-form games and take up the tempo of the longest format, hour after hour of focus in the middle.

Perry was unavailable through injury on the second day of the Women’s Ashes Test at the MCG, and Sutherland made sure that she wasn’t missed. Batting into the third session for 163, she was the biggest factor in pushing Australia to 422 for fiive, a lead of 249 by stumps. This made three centuries in her past four Tests, after 137 not out at Trent Bridge and 210 against South Africa at the Waca. Unflustered, for a long while Sutherland looked on track to become the first women’s player to make two double centuries. In the more expansive history of men’s Tests, doubles in consecutive innings is something only six players have achieved.

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Let’s face it, Australia could pick people from the crowd and still beat England | Geoff Lemon

Hosts’ selection lacked their normal ruthlessness but, with Alana King leading the way, were still comfortably superior

Five hours before the Women’s Ashes Test started at the MCG, a different match was happening a couple of kilometres down the road in St Kilda. The Afghanistan women’s team, made up of nationally contracted players who had to escape their home country in fear of their lives when the Taliban took over in 2021, assembled from their new homes in Melbourne and Canberra to play their first match as a complete side against a charity Cricket Without Borders team at Junction Oval.

They put in a decent showing to make 103, which might have been higher had their best bat, Shazia Zazai, not been run out in a mix-up on 40 from 45 balls. Then without fielding at the highest standard, with a few catches going down, they took three wickets and managed to push the chase into the final over, going down with four balls to spare. None of them were deflated by the result, instead elated to have the chance to play, and mobbed by family and friends on the field during the post-match presentations.

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Australia’s fortunes turn on bowling choices ahead of first Test in Sri Lanka | Geoff Lemon

The batting order in Galle looks set – but absence of Cummins and Hazlewood leaves decisions on the variety of spinners

Australian Test teams have had a shift in their relationship with Sri Lanka, a country they tour rarely but for a long time toured with success. In five trips from 1983 to 2011, the visitors only lost one Test, which was enough to decide their only series loss after the second and third matches were heavily washed out.

But in 2016 a pretty handy Australian side got whitewashed 3-0, after first dropping the ascendancy in a remarkable turnaround in Pallekele. Then in a shorter series in 2022, after a sizeable win on a surface that spun big, Australia got pummelled by an innings in the second match, while the country they were visiting was in upheaval with massed crowds on the streets causing the popular overthrow of a broken government.

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Steve Smith stands out as different to the rest as he takes place among the greats | Geoff Lemon

The Australian batter will enter the 10,000 Club for Test runs to less fanfare in Sri Lanka but with a career record that is as unique as his style

When Steve Smith started the recent Test series against India not far from 10,000 career runs, there was no guarantee that he would make 315 more across five Tests. Centuries in Brisbane and Melbourne narrowed the gap to 38 for the Sydney Test. Broadcasters ran recorded interviews with teammates reflecting on his career in the context of the milestone that hadn’t yet arrived. The other Australian members of the club – Ricky Ponting, Allan Border, Steve Waugh – were all on hand in Sydney with a presentation planned. Until Smith nicked off for 4 in the second innings, stuck on 9,999.

Assuming he can score a single across four potential innings in Sri Lanka, the moment will soon arrive in far quieter environs, with a small crowd and no hall-of-famers on hand. But there he will be, alongside the aforementioned countrymen, along with 10 other greats: Younis Khan, Sunil Gavaskar, Mahela Jayawardene, Shivnarine Chanderpaul, Brian Lara, Kumar Sangakkara, Alastair Cook, Joe Root, Rahul Dravid, Jacques Kallis, and Sachin Tendulkar.

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Bigger challenges than a debut with nothing to lose await Sam Konstas in Sri Lanka | Geoff Lemon

The teenage prodigy who scooped his way into national consciousness on Boxing Day has a lot to prove on Australia’s upcoming tour and beyond

If you’re Sam Konstas, you’re used to things moving quickly. It took 718 first-class runs to get into the Australian team. It took 113 Test runs to potentially change the way it is set up. For almost two years since Travis Head won a shootout in India, the plan has been clear: on the next ragging Asian pitch, the usual No 5 would skip up the order, opening the batting to target rare overs of seam or to smack spinners using a harder ball. Usman Khawaja would partner him with graft, the veteran regular opener bridging the gap after David Warner’s retirement.

A few weeks before Australia’s imminent series in Sri Lanka, though, that plan was turned upside down. Konstas is also an opener. Konstas is also in the squad. On the momentum of the moment, Konstas is going to play. So either Khawaja moves down the order for the first time in years, Konstas plays out of position in his third Test, or Australia abandon the Head plan that has sat there for so long waiting to be implemented. However it goes will mean a major last-minute change on the basis of a Test career that reads 60, 8, 23, 22.

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Beth Mooney’s cool head and sheer class runs England ragged | Geoff Lemon

Australia’s opener extends her remarkable record of batting long in the shortest format

Contrary to general perception, even T20 cricket does not have to be all about the boundaries. The final over of Australia’s innings showed that, in a running masterclass staged by Beth Mooney and Tahlia McGrath. It was all the more impressive given Mooney had been out there for the entire innings. It was, staggeringly, the ninth time she has batted through the 20 overs for Australia, nearly one in five of her 51 innings opening when batting first.

It is an absurd record in such a volatile format, in a position that mandates risk-taking from the start. Mooney has never been out in the 20th over when batting first, and only twice in the 19th. Add that to the 14 times she has opened and remained not out at the end of a chase. Mooney is famous for overheating on hot days to the point of needing an ice collar, but she clearly has ice in her veins.

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Beth Mooney’s cool head and sheer class runs England ragged

Australia’s opener extends her remarkable record of batting long in the shortest format

Contrary to general perception, even T20 cricket does not have to be all about the boundaries. The final over of Australia’s innings showed that, in a running masterclass staged by Beth Mooney and Tahlia McGrath. It was all the more impressive given Mooney had been out there for the entire innings. It was, staggeringly, the ninth time she has batted through the 20 overs for Australia, nearly one in five of her 51 innings opening when batting first.

It is an absurd record in such a volatile format, in a position that mandates risk-taking from the start. Mooney has never been out in the 20th over when batting first, and only twice in the 19th. Add that to the 14 times she has opened and remained not out at the end of a chase, some of those deep into an innings. Mooney is famous for overheating on hot days to the point of needing an ice collar, but she clearly has ice in her veins.

Continue reading...