All posts tagged 'rain'

Well, be careful what you wish for. I wanted an Aussie fightback to validate England’s excellent performance so far, and I got it. Coupled with the distinct possibility of significant rain, it has given the hosts more than a glimmer of hope of saving a test match they have no right to salvage.

All talk on the Sofa at the start of play was around the timing of Strauss’ declaration. I favoured putting the Aussies straight in to capitalize on any morning moisture and the prospect of the 2^nd new ball late in the day. Manny preferred an hour’s thrashing about to ensure England wouldn’t need to bat again.

In the end, Strauss opted for the worst of both worlds by using up 41 minutes to score an additional 69 runs.

It was a thoroughly entertaining 41 minutes and gave us the opportunity properly to say goodbye to Xavier Doherty. Pieterson managed to surpass his previous highest test score and then promptly got out for 227 playing an insane slog to a wide ball that popped out of the footmarks. Xavier got his best and last test wicket and was then promptly smashed for six.

The true sadists in our commentary team enjoyed the rapidly bloating Aussie bowling figures (hard to pick a favourite from Siddle’s 0-121, Bollinger’s 1-130 and X-Doh’s 1-158), but all the while I feared the gloomy weather reports. But 620-5 is hard to argue with, and Bell’s unbeaten 68 confirms he’s in fine form.

The threat of rain is perhaps the most disempowering element of being a committed cricket watcher. Everything unfolding before you becomes tinged with anxiety and uncertainty. Manny cautioned patience as Aussie wickets refused to tumble, but when you’re receiving 40 tweets a minute with various unconfirmed reports of impending meteorological apocalypse, every innocuous delivery left alone outside off stump ratchets up the tension and frustration.

In fairness to all concerned, England’s bowlers stayed true to their plans, and Australia’s openers discovered some of their missing mongrel.

Katich, crippled by his Achilles problem, could barely run, frequently using his bat as a crutch. But somehow he managed to pull and drive impressively. Watson was as Watson is; fine looking straight driver with an increasingly solid defensive technique.

But as has been the pattern of late, their gutsy opening partnership was broken soon after lunch. With the score on 84 Katich dabbed at a turning delivery from Swann and got the faintest of feathers through to Prior. Interestingly he appeared to consult Watson as to the merits of referring the decision but decided against.

The arrival of Ponting always gets the juices flowing. He may not be in vintage form but you sensed that if anyone was going to get Australia out of this hole it was going to be their skipper.

But the wicket was definitely starting to crumble and Swann was getting the ball to turn and spit out of Bollinger’s footmarks (another stick with which to beat Doug the Rug).

When Swann got one to turn less, Ponting played for the spin and got a thick edge through to Collingwood at slip.

Pandemonium at once reigned. Joy was unconfined. It was as if the entire English diaspora had been released simultaneously from an underground slave cave and were free once more to smell the air and feel the sun on their cheeks.

And when Watson departed 11 overs later prodding at Finn and taken by Strauss low at slip, suddenly the threatened rain clouds counted for nothing.

But Hussey has defied his poor pre-Ashes form. Together with the fluent but lucky Clarke, they began once more to sow the seeds of anxiety.

Clarke has been out of form for a while now. His back has troubled him, his stance has got lower and lower, and he has looked less like the frisky pup of the past and more like the arthritic farm dog waiting to be put down.

Today he used his feet to negate Swann’s turn. With Hussey eagerly scampering between the wickets he managed to chip away alarmingly quickly at England’s 375 run lead.

They made it to tea, and the rain tweets started up again. Was the storm going to miss the ground? We checked inconclusive radar reports. We scanned the TV for signs of prevailing winds. Sure enough, it came about an hour after tea.

Dismay was getting the better of patience. We railed at the injustice of it all. Typical of the Aussies to escape their just desserts. How can it rain at Adelaide?

But there are many Gods in this world, and just as the Aussies have theirs, we English managed to summon one of our own. Off came the covers with 65 minutes remaining.

If we could take one wicket and get as close to the 2^nd new ball as possible we could still hope for victory on day 5.

But agonizingly Hussey and Clarke speeded up. Strauss inexplicably tried Collingwood when we were screaming for Finn. Swann nearly had Hussey bowled. He nearly had Clarke caught. Nearly.

But then a strange thing happened. Strauss turned to KP for the last over of the day and the 80^th of the innings. From the second ball he got one to turn out of the rough. Clarke tried to nudge it behind square on the leg side but only managed to thud it into his thigh. It popped up over Cook’s head. He turned. He dived. He caught it. More pandemonium.

And to add to the startling surreality of it all, Clarke referred it, or didn’t, or England did or the umpire did according to 4 different sources. Either way we had our wish. Four down and a new ball due first thing tomorrow. Had KP not decided to turn his cap round 180 degrees in the manner of a smug teenager who’s just pulled at a party, it would have been the perfect end to the day.

I dare say it could rain and we could be thwarted, but Clarke’s loss feels like a body blow. Fifty overs of play and I reckon England will get the victory they so richly deserve.

But until that 10^th wicket goes down expect bitten nails, prayers to the weather Gods and lots of nervous pacing around to be the order of a very tense fifth day.

So, international cricketers are in danger of burn out. The amount of cricket that’s scheduled will result in players taking early retirement and picking and choosing games. Test cricket for sure will fall by the wayside as exhausted sportsmen drag their weary bodies from one high pressure match to the other. Well, call me a miserable old git stuck in the 60’s but am I alone in thinking this international cricketer lark is quite low physical maintenance? Since England arrived in South Africa they’ve played 5 one day games (full days mind you), and a punishing two and three quarter 20/20 matches in 5 weeks. In total they’ve had to endure a back breaking 260 overs in the field. Colin Dredge would get through that many in less than a week at Taunton in the 70’s. In part this is due to the absurdity of attempting to play cricket in South Africa’s so called summer.

You could be fooled for thinking that the land of the rainbow nation was some sort of sub tropical paradise if you’d sat through the promotional videos that accompanied last Friday’s turgid world cup draw. But closer scrutiny of the meteorological facts reveals that half of South Africa (the half where they insist on trying to put on cricket matches incidentally) receives more rain in an average summer than Manchester. Fifteen days in every November and December it rains in Jo’berg and Pretoria. It’s seriously infuriating. Especially when we’ve got the Saffies on the rack. The only comforting consequence being that we have that much longer to marvel at what might be wrong with Anderson’s knee. Scans reveal nothing, but he’s labouring in terrible pain and might not make the first test. As for Sidebottom, he’s bowled about 86 overs in 9 months and has a crocked side. In form then. So whom to England call up? Harmison, a known but mistrusted commodity? No. Mark Davies who has missed half of the last three seasons with the usual smorgasbord of ailments, all no doubt brought on by playing too much cricket.

Maybe, they actually don’t play enough cricket. Is it possible that the niggles, aches and pains that were a regular feature of a fast bowler’s life from the start of cricketing time until the arrival of central contracts, are in fact the natural background noise that accompanies a professional sportsman’s career? Poor old Anderson and Co. are shocked by these pains. Having played less cricket than a more than averagely keen club player over the last 3 years, they are bemused by these sensations of stiffness after a long day in the field. Their knees don’t feel quite right. They can’t bend down with quite the same ease as they could in their youth. Blow me down.

Of course, I’m lashing out in fury at anything, owing to the lack of cricket to report on. It's bad enough spending four months in unemployed, miserable, grey gloom, when sunsets coincide with the Countdown soddin' Conundrum, without my winters being blighted by vicarious rain. And that’s the point. Forget less cricket. If a game is rained off, schedule another one immediately. If necessary do it indoors. The cricket authorities (for whom I have a lot of time by the way. You try navigating your way through numerous cultures, power interests and a game whose laws, yes laws, have been passed down from generation to generation like the sacred non existent tablets that Moses must have mislaid – I mean have you seen them?) have managed to find space for pyjamas, white balls, orange balls next year, limited overs, very limited overs, umpire review systems and Duckworth Lewis. I want cricket. I don’t care how they bring it to me. Have both captains throw 16 sided dice that correspond to dots, runs and wickets, and then computer generate the results. Or, or, just tell us something is happening but say that the grounds are empty 'cos of a nationwide bomb scare and there are no TV pictures. Make it up. Commentate it, and make it up. Something, for chrissake. Just don’t schedule games in South Africa, in November and December, on top of a high plain. And most importantly of all, don’t listen to the preposterous whinging of  people who claim they’re overworked when they actually put in about 100 days of labour a year, half of which is spent in an air conditioned pavilion tweeting about their colleagues’ diabolical taste in music.

Oh, and I just checked the weather forecast for Jo'berg. Thunder storms for four of the next five days. Hmmmmm. Thank God guns are illegal in Tooting. 

Listen to SA v Eng 5th ODI Highlights (and World Cup Draw) Durban.

It is so tempting to revel in the elements and congratulate Mother Nature for effectively ruling out any chance of an Australian win at Edgbaston. England could just about manage it, if they reached 450 tomorrow and then bowled the Aussies out in two sessions on Monday, but the prospect of the visitors taking 18 more wickets and having a second innings in the twelve hours remaining stretches the bounds of belief. So it's got to be advantage England.

Or is it? Andrew Strauss believes that an Ashes win is only meaningful if you take on the best Australian side there is. That's why he let Graham Manou sub in for the injured wicketkeeper, Brad Haddin, after the toss and the naming of teams on Thursday. Presumably he would also want to beat the Australians without the weather helping. But surely, you might say, you have to take whatever luck comes your way? I would say not. To follow that line of reasoning is to miss the essence of a victory against the old enemy.

You see, no-one whinges like the Aussies when they fail to win. If they have an excuse for a defeat, or even a draw, it is repeated ad nauseam. They failed to beat England at Lord's in 1997 because rain intervened. The same was said of Brisbane in 1998, with knobs on. England were let back into the 2005 Ashes contest because Glenn McGrath was injured at Edgbaston, an excuse which was wheeled out again at Trent Bridge. You get the idea. So, if England are to regain the Ashes this time, it's got to be all-out, full-strength warfare in blazing sunshine. And should we lose, we can tell anyone who'll listen that we'd have won if we'd had Kevin Pietersen.