The Not-so-IPL Game One: Oh the agony
What follows is a collection of live blog posts I conducted on the opening day of the 2009 Indian Premier League:
What follows is a collection of live blog posts I conducted on the opening day of the 2009 Indian Premier League:
We're hours away from the opening of the 2009 Not-So-IPL. Australia has, shock horror, won an ODI against South Africa, and will choof off to the Home Of World Cricket which will host its first official one-day international next Wednesday.
Mitchell Johnson. A devastating display with the bat in a losing cause was enough to have him breezing past Dale Steyn to break the ribbon first at the end of the six-Test reciprocal series between Australia and South Africa, conducted over the past three months.
Congratulations to England on their victory in the Women's Cricket World Cup final today. They were, without doubt, the best team in the tournament, and probably have the best organisation behind them. It's a far cry from their nadir in 2000.
The disappointments of the tournament? Australia, who finished fourth, are in a rebuilding phase. South Africa's seventh placing was a big shock.
For the sixth and final Test of the reciprocal Australia-South Africa dual Test series, I will be posting my daily best-on-ground (BoG) votes to Twitter, and posting a final roundup to this blog after the conclusion of the game. Suffice to say that Dale Steyn is now in the box seat.
A reminder that the Midwinter-Midwinter will be back in the Ashes of 2009 coming this July. Maybe I can be encouraged to dream up some other stupid award in the meantime...
A number of other projects have kept me away from my own blog lately. I promised at the end of the Sydney Test Australia v South Africa in January that I would continue the BoG points tally for my outstanding play of the Aus-RSA reciprocal Test series (for the hugely unprized The Kepler-Wessels) with the South African leg of the tour.
"Having two umpires from your own club officiating in a match in which you need 12 runs off the last over is a recipe for disaster and that is what nearly transpired during the match.
The last over of the day proved incendiary as Poreporena, needing 12 to win, were given a blatant hand by clubman Rarua Agalu standing as square leg umpire when he chose not to give his own team captain John Ovia out for a clear-cut run out off the first ball."
Antigua is having a bad trot. Having suffered the humiliation of having a Test match at their wizbang new-ish Sir Vivian Richards Stadium being abandoned because of a dangerous playing surface, they now find that the Man Who Held The Antiguan Economy By The Short And Curlies is in deep trouble with the US legal system.
Before I move on from last Friday's IPL auction, I leave you with the lead story on the front page of Saturday's Telegraph (Kolkata), and with these five words: