Its Only Cricket

3rd Test: Australia wins Sydney Test (scorecard), South Africa won Test Series 2-1.. T20 & ODI series follows.
Current Cricket Series : South Africa vs Australia, West Indies vs New Zealand. Coming Up : India in NZ 2009.

Day 1 : Roy & Hogg spoil RP's & Bhajji's party


Symonds-Sydney-Century.jpg 0/1 to 119/3 turned into 134/6 before Hogg joined Roy (Andrew Symonds). Fall of wickets turned into flood of boundaries, before Brett Lee began his endeavors..

Reason why Australia is sitting on the verge of invincible record of 16 consecutive wins, similing at rest of world's cricket, is because everytime their team is in trouble - they find a saviour! including the umpires!

Story of Sydney test's first day starts with Ricky Ponting wining the toss, opting to bat (unhesitantly) and sending Phil Jacques with clear orders - go n attack.. Ponting, a number 3 batsman, has been getting out regularly to Harbhajan Singh (7th time today), so he made sure Phil Jacqes (who's a slow scorer early on) plays his strokes or gets out. Trick was to play some balls before Australia's premier batsman faces India's ace spinner. It was swinging like Banana for Rudra Pratap Singh, but Jaques threw his wicket for a duck & made way for his captain.

Some handsome shots but 2 wickets for visitors in first session added onto 4 in post lunch session. Aussie batsmen had no answer to Harbhajan Singh's gile & RP's rejuvenated spell. New look Tendulkar with lots of zinc cream on his face (some skin allergy was the reason) took back-to-back 3 special catches at first slip & Australian first innings looked like ending below 200.

Say thanks to low level umpiring
*Ponting edged to Ganguly down leg-side.. big nick - Mark Bensen unmoved.
*Ponting hit the ball he was given lbw on.. England's umpire mistakes again.
*Andrew Symonds edged to Dhoni off Ishant sharma.. big snick but this time Jamaican Steve Bucknor didn't hear it!
It must be noted that Indian batsman (Dhoni, Dravid and others) walked before being given out during 1st test at Melbourne.. but none Aussie was walking today! This even prompted Sunil Gawaskar to repeat his sentence - "An Aussie only walks when his car runs out of gas/fuel, never otherwise".

At one moment, India had taken 3 wickets for 2 runs in 3 overs, but George Bradley Hogg, who has 4 first class centuries to his name - brought up his first test match half century. and quite strokeful at it.

India vs Australia, 2nd test, end of day 1 scorecard
Australia : 376 for 7 wickets, 89 overs.
Jaques 0, Hayden 13, Ponting 55, Hussey 41,
Clarke 1, Gilchrist 7, Hogg 79 (102b, 17x4 2x6),
At Crease : Symonds 137 & Brett Lee 31.
RP singh 21-3-108-4, Harbhajan 20-2-88-2.

Fun notes from Day 1
*Anil Kumble came out at the toss in new India cap. Looking pretty but Indian captain was back into his old cap (a cricketers first national cap) while taking the field. I also notice the re-occurance of his superstition of pulling his shirt around the chest every now and then!
*After scoring six 50s on the trot, Phil Jaques was out for a duck!




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