Geoff Lemon's Blog, page 9
December 14, 2024
India fail to learn lessons of the past as Australia gifted early advantage
Cricket writer’s challenge: discuss bowling first in a Brisbane Test without referring to Nasser Hussain. Better to fail at that challenge in the first line and get it out of the way. England’s former captain has copped an unfair amount of grief for his decision at the toss in 2002. Captains who bat first and lose badly never get criticised for making that decision.
England of that era were likely to be thumped by an epochally great Australian side no matter what they chose. Facing Glenn McGrath, Shane Warne, and Jason Gillespie, they were bowled out in the fourth innings for 79. Facing those three first up would not likely have helped.
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December 12, 2024
Australia’s fortress has lost its aura but history weighs heavy on the tourists | Geoff Lemon
The hosts were unbeatable at the Gabba until India broke the spell but a series of changes mean they can start to rebuild the record in the third Test
It’s passing strange. In town ahead of the Australia-India Test, Brisbane feels as it always has: guys walking down Queen Street carrying boxes of mangoes, the Queensland humidity performing its ritual of luxuriant suffocation as the city’s air begrudgingly shifts along the snake-path of the river. The Gabba Test though, does not feel quite the same.
For three decades and more, this was where Australian teams were unbeatable. Pointed out with a heavy drumbeat of symbolism, the previous visiting winner was the great West Indies team of 1988. It took the best ever to achieve this feat, was the message. But that’s not the case any more.
Continue reading...December 7, 2024
Pat Cummins takes five as Australia avert crisis to level series with India
Crisis averted. Panic stations vacated. All units stand down. Australian cricket followers were hitting every big red button they could find after India handed out a hammering in Perth, but the Australian team hit the big pink button in Adelaide. A different style of thrashing has levelled the five-match series. It took less than two and a half days, not even a third night – under seven sessions – for Australia’s bowlers to take apart India either side of Travis Head’s hundred. A win by 10 wickets that freed up everybody’s Sunday afternoon.
It’s not pure hindsight to say that some of the dire responses to Perth – whitewash imminent, permanent guard change, scrap the team to sell for parts – were overblown. This Australian configuration has achieved plenty in tough situations over several years and is still stacked with quality. It’s also true that some of those players are underperforming, the collective has vulnerabilities, and that appropriately timing a team’s transition requires a cascade of decisions that can be got right or very wrong.
Continue reading...Travis Head brings the South Australia feelgood factor to make India suffer
A lengthening afternoon, an Adelaide Test, and two South Australians batting together in the sunshine. Something felt very right about that, as Travis Head and Alex Carey took Australia towards a first-innings lead of 157 against India through much of the second session of day two. The old scoreboard ticking, the church steeple peering over the grandstand’s shoulder, the hill stuffed like a French goose, the people in a sell-out crowd robustly voicing approval as Head in particular kept whacking a pink missile in their direction.
In practical terms, state-based parochialism is irrelevant in modern Australia, a performative dance for politicians to half-heartedly perform around budget allocations or State of Origin. Even with cricket’s domestic structure still built along those borders, the consensus from outside South Australia admits that Adelaide Oval is the country’s best ground, and Adelaide’s Test the summer’s most enjoyable. The festival feel is unique, the city always turns out. Even among grumbling at being allocated the struggling West Indies the past two summers running, Adelaide cracked 50,000 people over the first two days both times. For the same team, Perth didn’t get that many in five.
Continue reading...December 6, 2024
Mitchell Starc rules as pink-ball king for Australia in second Test with India
Sporting songs from the outer are usually dross, partly because they’re most often sung tunelessly by annoying drunks, and partly because they usually consist of one cringey couplet jammed with no consideration of cadence or metre into the scarcely heeded melodic line of a mid-tier radio hit. The few that are slightly more artful stand out, appearing far better by virtue of their company than they might objectively deserve. One such of recent years that provides occasional enjoyment is: “Hark, the herald angels sing – Mitchell Starc, the new-ball king.”
The phrasing fits, the use of a Christmas hymn is seasonally apt for Australia in December or January, and the sentiment reflects a cricketing truth. Starc with a lacquered Kookaburra (while that sounds a strange object to possess without context) is a menace. But swap out the lyrics of “new-ball” for “pink-ball” and it would be even more apt. In the day-night Test format, nobody has done it better.
Continue reading...Australia v India: second men’s Test, day one – as it happened
Mitchell Starc took career-best figures of 6 for 48 as Australia rolled India for 180 on the first day in Adelaide
We’re underway…
The anthems, then the commencement bell is rung by Tim May. A name that rings out in concert with this ground and with South Australian. Bowled good offies for Australia, 42 not out in the one-run loss to West Indies on this ground, and won the Shield final here in his last first-class match.
Continue reading...December 5, 2024
Australia’s bowling quartet ripe for change with India on song for Adelaide Test | Geoff Lemon
The most successful attack in history holds few fears for the tourists but the day-night clash looms as the worst time to break up the foursome
It would be hard to make an argument that the best four bowlers in Australia are anyone but Pat Cummins, Josh Hazlewood, Mitchell Starc and Nathan Lyon. All four are in Australia’s top 10 Test wicket-takers, the first two closing on 300 scalps and the latter two comfortably past it. Collectively, their tally is 1443.
Since they first combined in the 2017-18 Ashes they have played 31 Tests together, by far an international record for any frontline quartet. Even with injuries and changed configurations in touring conditions, that makes almost half of Australia’s 64 Tests in that period, including 23 of 36 at home.
Continue reading...November 26, 2024
Phillip Hughes: the loss of a daring and bright-eyed future is still keenly felt | Geoff Lemon
It’s tempting to say cricket is not important when thinking about Hughes’s death 10 years ago. But the loss of his career is symbolic of a broader lost future
So here it is. 27 November, the centrepiece of a desperately sad sequence of dates. 25 November, the day 10 years ago when Phillip Hughes was struck by a cricket ball and hospitalised. 27 November, when his life support was ended as futile. 30 November, the 26th birthday that he never reached. 3 December, the funeral that spilled down the street of Macksville. 9 December, his teammates somehow pulling themselves together for a Test match where his absence made him the defining presence. 13 December, relief more than happiness when they won, the one thing they could control.
You probably recall that match, the ceremony around it. The pictures are bright, an easy transfer from television screen to memory. Other memories we might prefer not to summon, but when we do, they’re stronger. Anyone who lived through that time will know the suffocating three days of waiting, from the news of an injury on the Tuesday to Peter Brukner’s confirmation of death on the Thursday. Those close to the centre knew soonest that there would be no recovery, and word filtered outward, but for most people the official announcement was all that ended their hopes for a miracle.
Continue reading...Keep calm and carry on? It may be time for Australia to shift from default setting after first Test thumping | Geoff Lemon
The current set-up lean towards playing it safe on team selection but after humiliation in Perth efforts to project calm can be dissembling
With 10 days between the early end of the Perth Test and the start of Adelaide, this is the Australian cricket supporter witching hour. They can cope with a close loss to an opponent doing something special: nobody was burning effigies in the streets of Greenslopes earlier this year when Shamar Joseph on one foot bowled West Indies to a sizzling Gabba win. But it’s very different after a beating like the one that India just handed out, when an Australian team that was storming the field after two sessions failed to fire a shot for the next seven.
Now, those supporters are angry. They’re swarming talkback lines, writing to papers, voicing disdain in pubs. They can’t stand a team looking incompetent, they want to know what will be done to avoid that happening again. And they have a lot of time on their hands, with no Test player due to face or bowl a ball at any other level in the interim, while a Sheffield Shield round plays out with plenty of potential replacements on display.
Continue reading...November 25, 2024
India complete huge win over Australia after Travis Head merely delays the inevitable
It’s funny to watch a day of Test cricket in which nothing matters. Not that any day of cricket really matters, if we’re honest, but a day when the play doesn’t even make a difference within the match itself. India in Perth on Monday had up their sleeve 522 runs and two bowling days to take seven wickets on a pitch already showing erratic bounce. The wickets would fall and the match would end, whatever the configuration. Travis Head slapping 89 runs and Mitchell Marsh launching some sixes on his way to 47 was great fun, but didn’t change the calculus in the slightest.
Usman Khawaja was the only player with the pedigree to bat a day and a half late in a game, but he fell immediately to a pull without gauging the bounce. Steve Smith is thought of in the same category but has always had a mediocre record batting last, even during his deity years – 70% of his career runs have come in the team’s first innings. This time, he was out for 17. The lower order couldn’t muster much, and as in the first innings, keeper Alex Carey looked the most controlled and confident ahead of his specialist batting colleagues. He was last out for 36 and his team went down by 295 runs.
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