Bloody hell
So there I am dosing away at 10am - it is Sunday after all, having this great dream about a girl I used to go to school with and my brother wakes me up.
"You gotta see this!"
"No I don't gotta see anything."
"You do."
"Why?"
"Because Australia are hitting South Africa all over the park."
"Nothing new."
"Just come look you dick."
I'm not a morning person, which becomes doubly true on Sundays. Nonetheless my brother knows this and wouldn't have troubled me if this wasn't something good.
I traipse downstairs, fire up the kettle and go sit on the sofa while it boils.
Bloody hell!
Thus begins my experience of the greatest cricket game ever.
To be honest I don't know where to start. I came in just as Ponting and Hussey were starting to tear it up, so that's the best place I guess. I think Mike Hussey is a great cricketer and embodies everything I like about the game. He is honest, gutsy, hard-working, enthusiastic and seriously talented, probably why the aussies call him Mr Cricket. For lack of a better way of describing him, I'd call him a situational player, one of those guys who you can send out in any situation -- good or bad -- certain in the knowledge that he will assess what is needed for his team to win, and go about implementing that plan of action. So promoting him up the order and sending him out at 200+ for 2 meant he was only going to play one situation, hit the already beleaguered and depleted South African attack all round the ground. 81 runs off 51 balls later he'd done exactly what was asked of him by his captain. Ponting was at his World-Cup final best, stroking the ball to the boundary through the air or on the ground with consumate ease, such that he hit almost as many sixes as four (9 to 12). With a typical Symonds cameo of the two-runs-per-ball variety, we had just witnessed the highest score in one-day cricket ever and the first team to pass 400 runs. Australia 434.
Game over right? Sure enough South Africa lose an early wicket and something odd happens -- Australia relax. Not for long, just a few overs where Graeme Smith and Herschelle Gibbs get going and suddenly the momentum starts to build. Whilst Gibbs is slower off the blocks, Smith takes every chance available to rattle along. The snowfall becomes an avalanche and the required run rate starts to drop. Smith holes out in the deep but it doesn't matter, Gibbs has reached critical mass and just wades into ever bowler put in front of him. Two sixes off Symonds and he's untouchable ... until he tries one shot too many and gives up his wicket when he could quite easily have become the first international player to make a double century. This, I thought, was when Australia would close the game down, and they did. Somehow though Boucher hangs about, playing sensibly while wickets fall around him. Van der Wath plays a useful cameo, Telemachus the same. Bracken somehow finishes with figures of 5-67 whilst his teammate Mick Lewis has the ignominy of being the first bowler to go for more than a hundred runs in ten overs. Hall strikes a boundary and then chips a dolly to Michael Clarke. Ntini to the crease with SA needing 2 off 3 to complete the single most stunning and unlikely victory in any sport over the last decade, if not ever. Lee bowls wicket-to-wicket and Ntini dabs a single down to third man. It's a tie but there's one ball left. Lee charges in and everyone watching takes a breath, Boucher cooly dispatches Lee over the boundary rope and SA goes wild. After which France vs England was a major anti-climax, more on that later. South Africa 438.
Bloody hell!
"You gotta see this!"
"No I don't gotta see anything."
"You do."
"Why?"
"Because Australia are hitting South Africa all over the park."
"Nothing new."
"Just come look you dick."
I'm not a morning person, which becomes doubly true on Sundays. Nonetheless my brother knows this and wouldn't have troubled me if this wasn't something good.
I traipse downstairs, fire up the kettle and go sit on the sofa while it boils.
Bloody hell!
Thus begins my experience of the greatest cricket game ever.
To be honest I don't know where to start. I came in just as Ponting and Hussey were starting to tear it up, so that's the best place I guess. I think Mike Hussey is a great cricketer and embodies everything I like about the game. He is honest, gutsy, hard-working, enthusiastic and seriously talented, probably why the aussies call him Mr Cricket. For lack of a better way of describing him, I'd call him a situational player, one of those guys who you can send out in any situation -- good or bad -- certain in the knowledge that he will assess what is needed for his team to win, and go about implementing that plan of action. So promoting him up the order and sending him out at 200+ for 2 meant he was only going to play one situation, hit the already beleaguered and depleted South African attack all round the ground. 81 runs off 51 balls later he'd done exactly what was asked of him by his captain. Ponting was at his World-Cup final best, stroking the ball to the boundary through the air or on the ground with consumate ease, such that he hit almost as many sixes as four (9 to 12). With a typical Symonds cameo of the two-runs-per-ball variety, we had just witnessed the highest score in one-day cricket ever and the first team to pass 400 runs. Australia 434.
Game over right? Sure enough South Africa lose an early wicket and something odd happens -- Australia relax. Not for long, just a few overs where Graeme Smith and Herschelle Gibbs get going and suddenly the momentum starts to build. Whilst Gibbs is slower off the blocks, Smith takes every chance available to rattle along. The snowfall becomes an avalanche and the required run rate starts to drop. Smith holes out in the deep but it doesn't matter, Gibbs has reached critical mass and just wades into ever bowler put in front of him. Two sixes off Symonds and he's untouchable ... until he tries one shot too many and gives up his wicket when he could quite easily have become the first international player to make a double century. This, I thought, was when Australia would close the game down, and they did. Somehow though Boucher hangs about, playing sensibly while wickets fall around him. Van der Wath plays a useful cameo, Telemachus the same. Bracken somehow finishes with figures of 5-67 whilst his teammate Mick Lewis has the ignominy of being the first bowler to go for more than a hundred runs in ten overs. Hall strikes a boundary and then chips a dolly to Michael Clarke. Ntini to the crease with SA needing 2 off 3 to complete the single most stunning and unlikely victory in any sport over the last decade, if not ever. Lee bowls wicket-to-wicket and Ntini dabs a single down to third man. It's a tie but there's one ball left. Lee charges in and everyone watching takes a breath, Boucher cooly dispatches Lee over the boundary rope and SA goes wild. After which France vs England was a major anti-climax, more on that later. South Africa 438.
Bloody hell!
posted by Owen at
10:01 PM
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