Captain's knocks, you've gotta love 'em. Andrew Strauss was so deep in concentration, watching intently as the swinging ball from Mitchell Johnson took his off stump, no addition to his overnight 161.
Today is the start of Andrew Flintoff's fourth-last Test match for England. Let's prepare the testimonials, the eulogies, the merchandise, the 2010 IPL contract. Bugger the Ashes.
There are few things more exciting in sport than the cliff-hanger of a Test match cricketing team hanging on for grim death in the final session of the fifth day to grab a draw. (Are you listening, IPL franchisees?)
Mark Webber. Mark Webber. Mark Webber. Mark Webber. Cadel Evans. Mark Webber. Mark Webber. Mark Webber. Pommy timewasting. Mark Webber. And that's the gist of the Aussie sports news this Monday.
It was a day that saw Simon Katich become the first player to score a Test hundred in Cymru. Ricky Ponting notched his 38th Test hundred, and inflatable kangaroos were held aloft everywhere when he passed 11,000 Test career runs. (Except, of course, that exactly 100 of those runs were scored against the ICC World XI in that ghastly Super Series aberration of October 2005.)
August 27, 2008 - a day of celebration of the one hundredth anniversary of the birth of Donald George Bradman. And they celebrated at his birthplace, Cootamundra, the hometown of his youth, Bowral, and in a black tie dinner at the business end of Sydney. Has any other sportsperson, in any sport, anywhere in the world, been celebrated quite so much as The Don?
With two dead erasers still to go in The Ashes of 2006-07, The Biggest Tasmanian Since Errol Flynn has a slender lead in the polling for the Midwinter-Midwinter.
B.T.S.E.Flynn is one point ahead of The Bloke Named After Eddie's Football Team, with, not the Lord of the Rings, but the Lord of the Text Alerts one point further back in third place.
For an explanation of what the hell the Midwinter-Midwinter is all about, refer to my post of November 24 on the subject.
Australia 602/9, England 53/3. We've been there before. Many times.
What if Freddie had won the toss yesterday? And said "this pitch has a bit of life in it, we'll bowl first"? Yeah well, what if he decided to have a bat? Maybe they would have gotten 400 and felt happy with themselves.
Instead, they batted second... starting about an hour before stumps on the second day. They might make 400. In fact, they need 403 to avoid the follow-on. That's not looking too good right now.
After his heroic backs-to-the-wall matchwinning knock to get Australia out of jail against cricketing powerhouse Bangladesh, there is a question begging to be asked of Ponting comma RT full stop:
Ricky Ponting's historic match-winning century at the SCG yesterday made the front page of all today's local papers, as the collage below demonstrates.
Reuters photographer David Gray captured Ponting's moment of ecstacy after scoring the winning boundary. Competing broadsheets The Weekend Australian (top left, owned by News Ltd) and the Sydney Morning Herald (bottom right, owned by John Fairfax and Sons) displayed their intense rivalry by publishing the exact same shot.
