Posted by Australians aren’t always particularly polite about the standard of the opposition. In a way, this is okay, because they’re equally happy to wheel out brutal opinions about their own team when they don’t do well.
On the other hand, it does mean that the rest of us can portray dismissive comments about the opposition as being extraordinarily hubristic. Take this comment from former fast bowler, Rodney Hogg, for example.
Sri Lanka have the worst new ball attack that has landed on our shores ever.
— Rodney Hogg (@RMHogg) December 11, 2012
And then scrutinise this scorecard.
That would make Australia’s one-day top order what, exactly?
How’s that old joke go?
Australia are built upside-down. Their bowlers score the runs, and their batsmen smell.
GET the runs, surely…
Ah, schadenfreude. How I love you so.
Proving Rodney Hogg wrong about something is probably low hanging fruit.
It can’t be a coincidence; the evidence is mounting up. When nine down and faced with setting a new record low score, Australia’s last wicket partnership has the guts and the skill to get them out of the bad record books. In Cape Town last year they were 21 for 9, five short of the lowest ever test score. Then it was Siddle and Lyon who rescued the team from infamy. Here it was 40 for 9, still 30 short of their lowest ever ODI score. But Starc and Doherty knew what needed to be done, and they did it.
Clearly this is something they practice. I assume they take the last pair aside and ask them to mentally picture their teammates losing nine wickets for 30 or so. If they’re struggling to conjure up the right images, they just show them videos of Phil Hughes batting.
I saw very little of this match (there was very little to it, I know, I know), but the handful of deliveries I saw mostly comprised Aussies dropping straightforward catches and missing run-outs.
And I really do mean that I only saw about half-a-dozen Aussie deliveries and three of them led to utter clangers in the field.
What a pity.
That they still needed twenty overs and six wickets to chase down seventy four runs tells you a little something about Sri Lanka as well.
But enough cricket for today. Where is KC’s biking page? What’s his opinions on Oprah? I am curious to know.
http://tourdefranceontv.co.uk/
Was amused (shocked) when the word Momentum appears in the name of a trophy…The one day series between NZ and SA is called ‘Momentum One day cup”
Think it’s the South African domestic one-day tournament, but that’s still jeffing brilliant.
Thaat’s right – jeffing brilliant. We don’t use those words lightly.