Aussies On The Autobahn!

The Australian Test squad for the tour of India:

Ricky Ponting (capt), Michael Clarke (vice-capt), Doug Bollinger, Peter George, Nathan Hauritz, Josh Hazlewood, Ben Hilfenhaus, Phillip Hughes, Michael Hussey, Mitchell Johnson, Simon Katich, Marcus North, Tim Paine (wk), Steven Smith and Shane Watson

Quite a surprise in parts, and while I understand and welcome most of the selections I am also wondering about a few of them. Let's start with the positive surprises:

Peter George, aka "Tall, thin and married", who was the talk of the town and got labelled as the next Glenn McGrath not long ago when he sliced through the Sri Lankans (read me here and here), has been included in the squad, and perhaps the selectors have also considered his impressive performance in the recent Top End T20 challenge. And BTW, his first class figures are awesome. Congrats Peter, well-deserved.

(c) Getty Images

Peter George talks about his call-up and his experience on Indian wickets: 

We will also have a chance to see Josh Hazelwood with the drinks in hand, who unforgettably rattled Craig Kieswetter's middle stump in the ODI series against England.

Peter Siddle is still on the comeback trail from injury, albeit playing at the Top End Challenge and the Champions League, and thus didn't receive the call, and as we all know the Indian wickets are not too kind to the fast bowlers; so it is good to include two hopeful rookies as backups, especially if we remember how well this strategy has worked last year in the ODIs. Clint McKay has not earned a call this time, given his recent performance sadly I understand why.

I would have also liked to see Steve O'Keefe or some other tweaker in the list, you never know how long Ritzy's foot lasts, and I am not sure if the two part-timers North and Smith will be enough to compensate a Nathan Hauritz,  but I guess we can't have everything.

Brad Haddin hasn't recovered from his elbow niggle in time and this will bestow another Timmy viewing upon us. Yes yes a thousand times yes! :D

The selection of Phillip Hughes is, as usual, a big question mark to me. He is not in great form and currently trying to find his feet at Hampshire. He was as severely injured as Siddle, who got omitted, and I am not sure if a backup batsman is needed in place of another bowler. And if there is really the need to stuff another willow wielder into the squad I would have much preferred to see Usman Khawaja return to the troop, apart from that Hughesless would never in his whole life write a tour diary as hilarious as Usman did.

The rest of the squad basically selected themselves, especially and obviously Marcus North. I could now emit a ton of blabla about what AUS will have to achieve in India and who in particular has to find form before the Ashes and blablablubb but 

a) it goes without saying really, and 

b) I am sure you can read that elsewhere. 

Bring it on!

Cheers,

Wes

The heat is on: Redbacks, Bushrangers warming up

•••
Top End T20 Challenge

[all scorecards as screenhots]

[scorecards on Facebook]

Kudos to NT Cricket for the coverage.

Scroll down for the Shaun Tait video.

Well well.

With the Champions League T20 looming in just a few days distance the two Australian participants Victorian Bushrangers and South Australian Redbacks as well as their more than worthy sparring partners Queensland Bulls crossed swords in Darwin in order to provide the CL teams with form and fine fettle. Six matches were played altogether as the teams clashed twice each in a sort of double round-robin competition.

The Redbacks stormed into the tournament with foam before their mouths. They had to take a humiliating defeat against the Vics in the Big Bash final and my hopes were so-so, but they convincingly beat the Bushrangers in the opening match as well as in their second encounter. Their rampage got halted by the Queenslanders, but when Redbacks and Bulls locked horns in the re-match the Redbacks strolled to victory with ease. This was the only defeat the Bulls had to suffer, as they won both their matches against the Bushrangers as well.

Which unfortunately but logically means that the Bushrangers couldn't celebrate a single victory in this mini tournament. I'm certainly a die-hard Redbacks supporter but of course I wish both Aussie teams to do as well as possible in South Africa, and the outcome of the warm-up tourny leaves me a little bit worried now.

Not sure which line-up exactly the Vics are sending there, I hope the absolutely essential Andrew McDonald will be available, Peter Siddle is back in the ring and has probably already packed his axe and chopping block into his suitcase, and the rest of the team consists more or less of experienced T20 warhorses; Nannes, Dussey and Klint will have to be in the form of their lives, hopefully they can drive the bad spirits out and start a bushfire!

The Redbacks, despite looking depleted on paper due to a massive lack of Cosgrove, Blizzard, Christian and partially Tait, flexed their muscles and especially their attack mauled the opposition, thereby helping the flourishing and gutsy chieftain Michael Klinger and deputee Callum Ferguson to lead the team home. It was great to see the likes of Haberfield, George and Duval shred through the batsmen, but we have to consider that the enemy in Saffaland will be of a different calibre.

However, small tender moments of bliss, such as the captain Klinger fearlessly leading from the front and the old skipper Graham Manou happily smashing the bowlers across the park, alternated with mental monkey madness for instance the double wicket maiden for Peter George and figures of 3-2-2-4, and you can sense that I am utterly satisfied with the outcome of these warm-ups.

A quick word about the Queenslanders: Jason Floros and Alister McDermott in the wickets! Good to know the kids are still around and kicking.

Here's a recent video of Shaun Tait speaking ahead of the Champions League T20 and retrospectively lauding Kieron Pollard and Mark Cosgrove *sneeef* He points out that the Saussies could be the sleeping giants of the tournament and I think it would be awesome if the Redbacks could surprise everybody in a dark horses sort of role. Shaun also gets an extra cookie for his endless eulogy on Dan Christian and the loyalty to his homies.

On a side note:

Check out the latest Hants blog, in which half-tracker, our much valued Hants brain on legs, generously grants us a closer look at Phil Hughes' impressive maiden appearance for Hampshire.

That's all for now,

gehabt euch wohl,

Cheers,

Wes

Draaawww and Blaaawww

(match post delayed because of Pakistan betting scandal, apologies)

Derbyshire v Middlesex

[scorecard]

The season is obviously fizzling out, instead of itching to get the post out I feel more like ahh blahh drawwww...

Although, one has to admit, the match had its moments. Middle looked a lot better than in the humiliating CB40 defeat they suffered against Derby a few days ago.

Newman shone with yet another well-composed ton, the old skipper grabbed 7 wickets and Pedro Collins and Toby 4 each, Dex was 92* before he declared :) Owais Shah fielded like his life was depending on it, and Chris Rogers, the man on the Middle radar, made 75 and 96.

Middle nearly managed to force Derby down to their knees;  on the last day 5 wickets had fallen in the space of 20 minutes and there was one hour of play left, but Derby stopped the collapse, dug themselves in, and the umpires declared the match drawn. The thing that impressed me most were Shaun Udal's 7 wickets but it's also great to see Dexter and Roland-Jones keeping on blossoming.

The actual talk of the match circled around the future of the Middle stocks. IOB will not play any matches anymore this season, Pedro is sitting on packed suitcases as due to a lack of international cricket his Kolpak status runs out and Middle will probably not re-sign him as one of their two overseas players then. Malan hmm-hmm-hmm, Morgan departs, although the latter has more or less been replaced already due to his long ECB-induced absence. So basically there's gonna be a hole in the middle order and in the bowling. Well I've already expressed my views in terms of batting (Housego) but as Middle are eyeing Chris Rogers and there was also talk about maybe trying to get Phil Hughes back as an overseas player next season and so on and so on the Housego wagon has probably derailed... he also had a couple of unlucky fielding scenes in the match. The Pedro spot has been left completely unspeculated about yet, I'm sure we will get a few grapevines talking soon.

My current Middle ranking:

1) Dexter - a revelation

2) TRJ - I'm shamelessly riding the hypewagon, it's a good wagon!

3) Owais - the rock you can build on

So that's it for now,

Cheers,

Wes

I want to vomit - someone tell me this isn't true!!!!

Pakistan: News Of The World exposes huge betting scandal - Link includes video

I am absolutely shattered. Still hoping it is set up, not true, a scam...
Aamer?? Asif?? Heck, our dear Salman Butt the ringleader? Kamran Akmal well no one ever thought he was clean... but the other three? This can't be true, it can't!!! But it is obviously on all news channels already.

Sorry for this incoherent shit. I can't think straight

How many times has it happened that a Pak player you really liked has twisted the knife in your stomach and then dug his hands into your guts? I've stopped counting. But Aamer is absolutely shocking. Heck, the guy could have ruled his own kingdom!!! If the accusations are true he'll be gone. I can't frickn wrap my head around it.

edit,
links of articles by News Of The World:

Detailed analysis of Aamer's and Asif's no balls - gutwrenching :((((

Meeting with the players, money is handed over, Salman supposed to bat a maiden over, Wahab Riaz

Pakistan had been planning to throw two of the ODIs v England

Majeed reveals all about the Sydney Test and the profits, ball tampering with vaseline


...

Mills kills in a lost cause

India v New Zealand

[scorecard]

I think the Kiwis had been lucky to receive half of the points from the washout against the Lankans, otherwise the humiliation would have been even worse. After their thumping win over India in the first encounter you would have expected NZ to pull the pants into the right position and go in with a bit more confidence. But losing the toss to a side that mainly consists of a determined Sehwag is always a blow to the morale, yet the Kiwis bowled their arses off and Timmy with 4-49, a superb Nathan McCullum with 3-35 and the two obligatory Mills kills rocked the Indian line-up, with the tiny flaw of Sehwag making bloody 110. Doom over the world, that was too much.

In my naive head I actually thought for some idiotic reason the total would be chaseable, until someone wrote something like "brittle batting line-up... Dambulla...". That felt like hammer on head. I seriously had totally forgotten about that, and all you could do in the end was watch the Sheepies go down. "Go" is the wrong word, they literally raced back into the hutch. Not sure why exactly the departure of an anti-hero like Martin Guptill triggers a collapse, because at the moment I am seriously reassessing my Seventoes campaign; it really took him a lot of time and hard labour to get me off his bandwagon (and I am still on it with half a foot for the mere reason of being physically unable to stop believing in him) but Martin G really is really doing his best to get axed. In fact it's a miracle he's still around. The rest of the batting line-up simply disgraced themselves in such an unspeakable manner that I don't want to talk about any of them, except for...

Kyle Mills

Kyle Mills is such a pleasure to watch, I can't throw my hands to the sky often enough and thank the lord for making him whole again haha. Oh man! His return demonstrates impressively how the Kiwis lacked edge during his absence. If Kiwistan had just one or two more of his kind they could hunt down the enemy like a horde of rampaging ogers. Go Millsy roll 'em!

Timmy Time: 4-49  |  Mills: 2-42, 52 off 35 (7x4, 3x6)  (c) Cameraworx/Live Images, AFP

Well well. Ross Taylor's string of successes has unfortunately got torn, but the problem lies a lot deeper. Kiwis can bowl, nobody would doubt that. But last night I caught myself thinking: What if they employed more Kolpak-sort-of batsmen, simply to get their international campaign up a level? Not saying that Grant Elliot is the next Sachin, but if you look around in county cricket for instance it makes you cry to see how many awesome Saffas are around who will never get the chance to play for a national side. What works for England could work for NZ as well, especially as unlike England NZ can obviously not produce the required batting depth on their own (while England have only just started bothering again). Out of the top of my head I cannot name a single awesome Kiwi batter, except for Ross that is, but even he has a steep learning curve to master. Thus nobody (I hope) would ever sledge the Kiwis as much as the English for any foreign players in the line-up, simply because everybody knows how much effort that little country puts in their cricket, especially if you consider that cricket is not their main concern in terms of sports. But the gap between domestic and international cricket is just so wide that the vast majority of attempts to lift the batting fails tragically. I know that a greater amount of legionaries in the side would maybe diminish the incentive for native Kiwis to aim at playing professional cricket, so maybe that's a shot in one's own knee then.

There have been suggestions around that NZ or NZ domestic teams should take part in the Australian domestic tournaments and I am highly in favour of that, alas it is not doable, although from an Australian perspective I would imagine it as utterly tempting, it would increase the attractiveness of the Shield matches enormously, if a some sort of New Zealand A team could join. Another possibility would be to somehow try and stuff more players into county clubs or allow for them in the Oz state teams. Not sure though if the Aussie clubs would make use of that offer. I am really out of ideas on how to solve the dilemma...

This was probably just a whole lot of tripe but imho NZ are that one minnowish side who really deserve to do better, they are such good bowlers and fielders and they need to find a way to expose themselves to top class cricket more often and become more competitive.

Blablablubb,

If you want a proper Kiwi blog by someone who is not a walking conniption fit, check this out: 

Suhas - Paint it, Black

Cheers,

Wes