"It's a whole new ball game
KFC Twenty20 is back"- promotional blurb in various locations on the Cricket Australia website
Excuse me, but how can it be back when it is whole new?
Just about everything I have to say about Tuesday night's Twenty20 international at the SCG was said one year ago after the Australia v South Africa game.
Just a few additional observations:
If the game was a sell-out, and the official attendance was 35628, then that's about 11000 members who didn't turn up!
Allen Stanford's multi-million dollar 20/20 extravaganza has become the latest entrant to the Pantheon of Cricket Vaporware - those would-be cash cows that disappear after, if they're lucky, one outing, or if they're unlucky - none.
The Stanford 20/20 Super Star match, set down between West Indies and South Africa for November 10 with a winner take-all purse of €3.9 million, has been cancelled. The reason will shock you, so sit down.
Andrew Johns is, arguably, the greatest rugby league player of the last decade. As a kid he would, like all sportsminded schoolboys in Australia, have played a bit of cricket at school and over the summer. None of this, however, explains today's revelation that Johns has been signed up to make two appearances in the New South Wales Twenty20 side for next season.
How long will it be before we see Sir Mick Jagger performing the pre-game entertainment at a county Twenty-20 Cup final?
And at the end of the fourth over, South Africa are nine for two. Yes folks, Twenty20 cricket explodes onto the Gabba!
To take the words of Bill Woodfull seriously out of context, there were two teams out on the field on Monday night, and only one of them was playing Twenty20 cricket. Australia, having lost their last Twenty20 international by a margin of 100 runs (in England last June), beat South Africa by 95 runs in front of the largest crowd to pack into the Brisbane Cricket Ground in modern times. And here's one big advantage 20-20 has over ODIs - you don't have to hang around for ages waiting for a badly-trailing side batting second to lose the game.
I've added a handful of pics from Sunday's Twenty20 game to my flickr site. Possibly more to come but I've chosen a representative sample for now.
I attended my first Twenty20 game yesterday. While I won't be hanging out for the second, there are plenty who will. And that's a good thing.
I haven't ranted much about Surrey on these pages for a while. Their performances in their last seven days - played over ever-decreasing durations - do not leave me with any great feelings of joy.
In the past week, Surrey has:
Let this be the first and last time I use the buzzword "Twenty20" to describe what is nothing more than glorified 20 overs a side tippety-run like we used to play at school. The PCL (Pyjama Cricket Lite) game between England and Australia at the Rose Bowl, Southampton is about to start.
You've gotta hand it to Channel Seven. Sky Sports' coverage absolutely enhanced with Tony Squires anchoring their telecast in Sydney, Stuie MacGill alongside him for expert insights, and Boofhead Lehmann at the ground with the sideline mike.
Doesn't matter, I have the TV sound down and listening to BBC Five Live. Now this is amusing. Agnew drivelling about PCL being "the future of cricket", while the good old Booker T and the MGs theme sound, circa 1968, playing in the background. Future indeed.
