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There's still rain on day 4 and it doesn't look great for test cricket at the SCG today. There's hardly any rain on the radar but what there is seems concentrated on the coast along Sydney's eastern suburbs.
South African fast bowling ace Kagiso Rabada (in action) is having an off series. He's second in the South African bowling series analyses with 11 wickets at an average of 32 but that contrasts with 268 career wickets at 22.85, and South Africa really needed him to fire given the current weakness of the batting. Although Anrich Nortje has reached impressive speeds over 150kph.
Some musings. The Brisbane test was over in two days on a greenish wicket. Asked if it was a surprise, Australian spinner Lyon said something like 'Not entirely, considering the bowling strength of the two sides' which kind of summed up the situation. But Australia's batting has been superb since whereas South Africa's has looked uncertain.
The mentality 'they're here to see me bat, not to see you bowl' is fairly common (never mind Warnie). In that context, it was amusing to see Australian captain Pat Cummins win the toss at Melbourne and elect to bowl before the first day crowd of 64,000, targeting the perceived fragility of the South African batting.
This upended Melbourne test convention which goes along the lines of 'When you win the toss you bat 9 times out of 10. On the 10th time you think about bowling and then bat!' Australia won anyway by an innings and 182 runs.
The 'Mankad' type dismissal is in the news, as it's considered unfair to dismiss a batsman who isn't facing a ball. However, Mitch Starc warned a batter at the bowling end several times about walking down the wicket before the delivery. It's against the rules of the game as it gives a head start if the batters take a run. 'I'm not doing it deliberately' was the defence, which went down poorly with the man who gets penalised by a run should he overstep the crease (which is checked every delivery, and 'no-balls' are shown on numerous TV replays). Said Starc 'I think he should get docked a run'...
The third Australia v India T-20 game in the 2016 series had a dramatic last-ball finish, with India's Suresh Raina hitting a four off the last ball to secure an Indian victory and wrap up the series 3-0. Australia scored 5-197, including 124 not out by Shane Watson off 74 balls. India had second bat and Rohit Sharma (52 off 38), Virat Kohli (50 off 36) and Raina (49 off 25) helped the score to 3-200, although the crowd favourite seemed to be 'Yuvi' Yuvraj Singh (15 off 12).
Still, after Australia won the one-day series 4-1 there were accusations the selectors weren't taking the Sydney Cricket Ground T-20 seriously, with Steve Smith and David Warner not playing and Test bowlers rested or injured. This enabled the Australian selectors to try out some of the Big Bash's top performers on a national stage. The crowd was 34,527, including lots of India supporters (check out the blue shirts in the concourse and Bill O'Reilly stand). Noisiest game ever, with announcers encouraging both Australia and India to 'Make some Noise!' and non-stop dancers (wearing yellow, under the scoreboard). Watson was man of the match and Kohli man of the series.
Watson picked a good time for the knock, getting 9.5 crore at the February IPL auctions!
Mumbai Indians win by 6 wickets against Royal Challengers Bangalore in the IPL 9 2016 Match
So its RCB vs MI at the Wankhede Stadium, Mumbai, home town of Mumbai Indians. And RCB was no Chris Gayle playing in this match so KL Rahul takes his place.
RCB is batting first, Hmmm..Kohli likes chases ...
Stuart Broad traps Travis Head lbw on the 2nd morning of the Old Trafford test. Broad bowled superbly throughout the game once again, troubling the Aussie batsmen constantly.
Australia's cricket captain and fast bowler, Pat Cummins, here bowling on the third Test's final day to Pakistan's Mohammed Rizwan, has laid to rest claims that fast bowlers are unsuitable captains for cricket teams.
Australia won the World Test Championship at the Oval in the final against India in June 2023, and then retained the Ashes against England.
In November, he led Australia to the Cricket World Cup one-day international trophy. They lost the first two games and then won nine straight, including the final.
For the upcoming IPL series in India, Sunrisers Hyderabad bid INR 20.5 crore ($3.67 million) for his services, the second-highest fee in the league's history.
Now he's capped it with a 3-0 win over Pakistan. His bowling hasn't suffered, he was player of the series and leading wickettaker with 19 wickets at an average of 12 and a strike rate of 28, an exceptional performance. His career stats of 258 wickets at an average of 22 and strike rate 46.2 are among the world's best.
Some musings about the one-day World Cup. Most of the talk about the final was about Cummins' decision after winning the toss to bowl first, well against the accepted 'bat first and get runs on the board' wisdom which had worked for teams during the tournament, particularly India which was undefeated until then.
Australian selector George Bailey's insight to Ravi Ashwin was that (paraphrasing) 'in the team's experience of short-form cricket in India the red soil disintegrates but the black soil gets better to bat on under lights...dew is not a big impact in red soil pitches whereas black soil pitches are good turners in the afternoon but in the night the pitch solidifies into a flat track and plays as though it’s made of concrete.'
This showed great understanding about how the wicket was going to play. The decision, backed up by aggressive, targeted bowling, enabled Australia to restrict India to a comparatively low total of 240 and then beat it, helped by a great innings of 137 from 120 balls by Travis Head (not to mention catching Rohit Sharma).
As an aside...the arrangements in India heavily favoured the local team, nothing to do with the players, umpires or pitches but rather the administration. While some aspects of the tournament administration were excellent, the late setting of the fixtures impacted fans. Crowds lift sides and make matches special. Overseas fans had visa delays and not knowing which venues would host the games meant that there were far fewer supporters than would have been expected...and this affected not just the overseas supporters...for example, the 47,000 opening game crowd at Ahmedabad's 132,000 seat Narendra Modi Stadium. Indians like watching Indian teams on TV but they also really enjoy competitive internationals, and were deprived of excitement by small crowds, particularly at the beginning.
Now to the excellent part...there were 48 games at 10 venues which now are among the world's largest, so there was a crowd record overall. The ICC claimed 1.25 million spectators and, on TV, 1 trillion total viewing minutes, which was up a third on 2011 when the World Cup was also hosted by India. International coverage grew with lots of viewers in Australia, the UK and Pakistan. The ICC also claimed 1.23 billion social media interactions. The final had 87.6 billion live viewing minutes globally, making it the most watched ICC match ever.