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In shit news, Australia have retained the Ashes. They won the first T20 international to give them a four-point series lead with only four points left to play for.
Test centurion Ellyse Perry was at one point on a hat-trick for Australia as England slipped to 16-4. From there, the tourists did pretty well to make 132-9 – but sadly not well enough when trying to defend it.
Here’s hoping the men can level the Asheses and force some kind of a play-off.
Similar deliveries:
A lesson from Pat Cummins: even bloody awful Ashes cricket is bloody brilliant
With the Ashes decided, England and Australia will look to determine which has the better ODI second XI
Tim Paine is going to play a bloody Ashes series whether there’s anyone to play against or not
Ashes series were already too frequent
Nope.
I can’t be doing with combined format series, no matter what they try to call them.
The Test “series” was drawn. I understand the financial issues around holding Tests but I don’t and won’t ever care about bilateral one day matches.
Which I guess would mean that Australia retained the Ashes when that Test was drawn, so this is old news.
It’s not a combined format series. It’s a single sport series.
I’m with Daneel on this one I’m afraid. You wouldn’t choose the footy World Cup champion through a mixture of eleven-a-side, five-a-side, and playground rules.
…actually maybe they should do that…
We’re not talking backyard cricket here. It’s much the same playing staff.
Also, football isn’t a sport that’s all about adapting to different conditions and circumstances, whereas cricket is.
I mean, on a rational level I can’t debate that.
On a petty level, I just really don’t like T20. It’s just not a circumstance I care about how players adapt to. Especially not the way it’s happening at the extent of more women’s Tests (according to James Sutherland). It may all be the same sport, but the formats are cannibalising each other, and I feel that making a series that originally existed as Tests into a ‘cricket series’ is the epitome of that.
*at the expense
My pettiness has overtaken my spelling.
I would like to see a combined men and women England team.
Give me Knight, Sciver, Taylor or Shrubsole over James Bloody Vince every time.
But then they’d be able to pick Perry over Shaun Marsh.
In other news, by which I mean first class cricket, even though the news is ageing a little, here is a link to my other visit to Lord’s in April 2014, which was also reported on this very site:
http://ianlouisharris.com/2014/04/30/middlesex-v-yorkshire-day-four-lords-30-april-2014/
In other, other first class news, I learn with regret (via Cricket badger) that former Lancashire cricketer Ezra Nutter passed away this very day…
…in 1903.
After women and men, decider to be battled out between British and Australian animals?
Think I know who’s winning that one.
I’m sure the animals XI has been done here before, but here’s my attempt:
Graeme Foxy Fowler
Graeme Swann
Graeme Jellyfish
Graeme Horse
Graeme Cat
Graeme Kangaroo
Graeme Elderberry Bush
Graeme Chicken
Graeme Moose
Graeme Worm
Graeme Goochcow
That’s a match for anything those Aussies could put together, unless they can use snakes.
Would the worm bat or bowl, Bert?
The Aussies have some pretty mean spiders, I am sure those extra limbs could be put to cricketing purposes. And failing that, the fangs.
No, you’re wrong Bail-Out. Spiders would be useless at cricket, because they are four times more likely to be out LBW. That’s why cricket is the number one sport among worms, and why no millipede has ever played first class cricket.
The only problem that worms have is that when they are no-balled for bowling down the leg side in ODIs, it literally makes no sense to them and they immediately collapse into an existential crisis (technically a legsistential crisis).
Shane White-lipped Snake would be the stand-out snake, I think.
Fake news.