The Ashes Begin: With A Bang

Its probably the littlest trophy in the whole sporting world. Certainly one of the oldest. More have been written about the Ashes than any other sporting contest. And why not? After all it carries a little poem too.

When Ivo goes back with the urn, the urn;

Studds, Steel, Read and Tylecote return, return;

The welkin will ring loud,

The great crowd will feel proud,

Seeing Barlow and Bates with the urn, the urn;

And the rest coming home with the urn.

 

Its been a long buildup to the double headed Ashes that are going to be played over the next 8 months. 10 Tests between the oldest rivals. 

It had been a long wait for the Ashes to commence. England had to play a 2 Test series with the Kiwis, followed by a 3 ODI series against Kiwis, followed by Champions Trophy, and a 2 T20 series against the Kiwis. Australia on the other hand had an even more action-packed start. They played(?) the Champions trophy, then lots of internal games, chopping and changing players, removing the coach, suspending brawling players.

Everyone expected England to turn up and roll over the Aussies. But in the greater interest, the Australianism is still there (thankfully). The greats may have gone, but some of the fight is still there. Inside 2 days of cricket, we have already seen many specials. Peter Siddle's fiver, James Anderson bowling Clarke, Phil Hughes & Steve Smith battling it out, and above all of them Ashton Agar. There is something about a 19-year old, making his debut, coming into bat at No. 11 with his team in deep trouble and then smashing a 98 breaking hordes of records. Its the kind of dream every kid (or even adults) aspiring to be an international cricketer has. It makes one fall in love with the game again after all the spot-fixing scandals. 

 

A 130+ years rivalry, historic context, a good fight and a fairytale story to begin the proceedings. 

Ashes - I already like you :) 

Arbit Statistics - 20: Peter Siddle

Peter Siddle once found his way to this posts on account of taking a Test hat-trick on his birthday. For some odd reason one of the more visited pages on this blog. Now he makes another foray through the latest edition of Arbit Stats.

Peter Siddle through his innings of 52 & 50 in the 4th Test of the Border-Gavaskar Trophy has become

1.  the first No. 9 to score a half century in both the innings of a Test.
2. And also the first ever No. 9 to top-score in both innings of a Test. 

A singularly unique feat. Also says a lot about how badly the "front-line" Aussie batsmen have been performing.

This is BLASPHEMY, MADNESS, NEWLANDS

A memorable scene from the movie 300 comes to mind (a score which is unthinkable here)

After the events in Newlands this is is what would have been the conversation

THIS IS BLASPHEMY, THIS IS MADNESS said the batsmen.

The bowlers would have said - THIS IS NEWLANDS.

An insane day of Test cricket in Cape Town. The scorecard resembles a 19th century test match. To sum up the events 23 wickets fell, all 4 innings took place on the same day, both teams were knocked out for less than a 100, Australia at 21/9 were in real danger of recording the lowest score ever in the history of Test matches, the last wicket added more than the 1st 9 combined, and in the 4th innings the batsmen settled down as if nothing had happened. What happened after lunch, did pitch transform into a snake-pit? And then quietened down after the Aussie innings. Also there were an extra-ordinary numbers of decisions overturned via DRS while Shane Watson recorded almost T20 type of bowling figures. And to round off a crazy day, Michael Hussey dropped  a simple catch of Hashim Amla of the last ball of the innings.

In this context, I can safely say Michael Clarke's 151 has to be one of the greatest innings of all times. Nathan Lyon & Peter Siddle's 26 runs partnership maybe just helped the pitch ease out a bit. Should Australia have declared then? Dont know but certainly an interesting day's play ahead.

P.S. Wonder if ICC's pitch committee has to say anything about this pitch. Recently Kotla & Galle have received lots of criticism. Wonder what will said about this one.

The 1st Birthday with a Century

January 4, 2010 - A comment posted on the cricinfo website about Ian Bell was the push needed to start a cricket blog. And thus was born Slipstream Cricket (then known as The Crickblog).

January 4, 2011 - The blog celebrates its 1st birthday while completing its century. This is the 100th post on this blog.

From that debut to the century its been an interesting journey. Covered quite a few matches international as well as some Indian dometic, Test cricket, ODIs, T20s, some Arbit Statistics, some quotes, a few pictures, selecting random XIs . It was nice to have a platform to write about my own passion for the game. And it felt good to see that this blog has started getting noticed.

Now for a list of people I would like to thank

• Ian Bell. A comment about Bell's inablity to get a century by himself was published on cricinfo. And that was the push needed to start the blog. Since then Ian Bell has got this monkey off his back. And is batting better than he ever has.
• Cricinfo. For publishing the comment. And for providing such a massive database for the links.
• The BCC! (Bored Cricket Crazy Indians). For having linked this blog on to their site and bringing itout in the public domain. Also thanks for the tweet.
• Peter Siddle. For being the biggest traffic driver.
• The readers of this blog. It was nice to see the score get past the 1000 mark.

Hope to continue blogging more and more.

With Best Wishes

Nishant

Update
Watching the 3rd day's play in Newlands between India & South Africa seemed a perfect way to celebrate the 1st birthday. Steyn's bowling, Sachin's century and some fighting cricket by both teams. Thanks for joining in the birthday party.

Peter Siddle - the Expression

The Ashes have started. The opening salvos have been fired. Australia have moved into a commanding poesition at the end of Day 3 thanks mainly due the Peter Siddle hattrick spell and the Hussey-Haddin 300+ partnership.

On Day 1, Siddle took a 6 wicket haul including a hattrick (Cook, Prior, Broad). Now, this is one awesome way of celebrating your birthday. It is his look of intense concentration while bowling which stands out. The best comment  -  his face looks as if he is trying to divide 376 by 17 in his head. Here is a pic