Want rain, invite a foreign cricket team!

The headline today is not from a soothsayer but based on facts and trends! There is a strong belief that if the country needs rain, then a foreign cricket team needs to be invited. And this belief was given credence with the arrival of the South Africans for a 5-match one-day series and 3 Twenty20 games.

A couple of days after the South Africans arrived it poured and it poured so much that the second one day game at the R.Premadasa Stadium, had a start, stop, start, stop beginning and ending on Tuesday night.

After Sri Lanka batted and made 223 for 9 in 49.2 overs, the rains came down and it poured down for a long time and when Duckworth and Lewis was consulted and when play resumed, the South Africans had to make 176 in 29 overs if they were to win and square the series one-all.

That was a big ask. A game that was nicely poised with the visitors having a good chance of squaring the series had not the rains come down, finally made it a one-side game with the Lankans emerging victors by 17 runs and going two up.

Pity that their top run scorer the bearded Hashim Amla was injured while attempting to stop a boundary.

Hashim Amla pays the price

With the ball scorching to the boundary, Amla should have let it go because there was no chance of him stopping it. But Amla chanced his bravery and paid the price. Without Amla, who was ruled out and unable to bat, it diminished South Africa’s chances of pushing for victory. And with Sri Lankan’s capably led by Chandimal striking telling blows at crucial times, the South Africans had to huff and puff and end up second best.

As we have always been stating, when the rains intervene and stall proceedings and when a 50-over game is reduced it takes away the excitement and the interest that this game promised when it started.

Take the recent International Cricket Council’s 50 over Champions Trophy in England. When the 50-over game was reduced to 20-a-side final it became a joke and should have got the guardians of the game putting their thinking caps on.

With bags and bags of mega dollars flowing in to cricketers, cricket boards and the ICC, it is time that the Cricket Boards endeavor to have an extra next day or begin the game from the point when rain intervened on the extra day, like was done in the Triangular tournament in the Caribbean recently.

Australians lambs to the slaughter

The Australian cricketers will continue to be lambs to the slaughter in the remaining Three of the Five-Test Ashes series, after them being easy meat to England in the first Two Test matches.

When Australia were getting bashed by India 4-nil in India, the talk was that the Indian bashing would help them get their act together and when Ashes time comes around they will be ready to fire down the Brits.

The team looked ragged in India with some players being sent home by now deposed coach Mickey Arthur for not doing their home work by providing what should be done to stall their capitulation against India.

That was unfortunate and it was the consensus that Arthur was playing the school master against the mature Australian cricketers. The sending home of the cricketers sowed the first seeds of dissension.

A supposed to be rift between Captain Michael Clarke and Shane Watson was blown out of proportion. While the two cricketers were quick to deny the rift, there was an undercurrent.

Then in England and while readying for the bitter Ashes series, came the news that Mickey Arthur the coach of South African heritage was sacked. Apparently Arthur cooked his own goose with the sending home of some cricketers from India which did not go down well with Cricket Australia.

Now Arthur is suing Cricket Australia. It is similar to what former Australian opening batsman Geoff Marsh who was coach of Sri Lanka did when suddenly Sri Lanka Cricket felt they had enough of him and showed him the door.

It will be interesting to see how the legal battles will be fought and who will come out victors. Both proved their credentials as coaches and it was not cricket to suddenly strip them of their responsibilities.

Now back to the present Ashes series and the best these Australian cricketers could do, although rules do not allow them to do so, is to take the next flight back home.

Their efforts in the First Two Test matches were of very poor quality.

To say that their efforts were not up to Test standard is to say the least. We hope the Aussies could prove us wrong by winning the next three Test matches, like Clarke said in his post match briefing.

All Australia and their former cricketing greats must be hiding their faces in shame, unable to understand and come to terms at the sub standard performances by their cricketers.

The present cricketers in Australia are poor in all departments of the game. And to think that they are playing in the Ashes which is the ultimate in cricket cannot be imagined.

Although having names such as James Pattinson, Ryan Harris, Mitchell Starc and Peter Siddle, the new ball is not put to good use. When they manage to break through early, they have no spinners who could dismiss the middle order and the tail. How Captain Clarke must be wishing for a Shane Warne, a Peter Sleep or a Stuart McGill.

Then when it comes to striking England’s James Anderson, Stuart Broad and Tim Bresnan make the new ball talk with their top class swing and reverse swing to have batsmen of the calibre of Shane Watson, Chris Rogers, Usman Khawaja, Phil Hughes and Michael Clarke struggling.

Then once off-spinner Graeme Swann comes on it is sickening to watch the batsmen struggling to come to terms. Other than for Clarke who uses his feet, the other batsmen look stroke less wonders being glued to the crease.

Good spin bowling is played by using the feet. Rogers, Hughes and Khawaja are poor examples to youngsters watching the action. In addition their technique against spin is very poor and how they came to be playing at this level is inexplicable.

The Aussies over the years have a reputation of succumbing to off spin bowling and it is no different this time round with the malady continuing. Swarn is rated high. But one cannot understand how a trundler like Joe Root who bowls donkey drop off spinners could also lure the Aussie batsmen.

The Aussie fielding too has not been in keeping with the high standards set by former teams. At the moment Aussie cricket is in a shameful mess and unless they can regroup which is unlikely and play the way we know they can, it will be clean sweep for England which will heap shame on Aussie cricket.

The last time the Aussies came back with a vengeance after being two nil down to triumph 3-2 was when Sir Donald Bradman was in his element scoring 810 runs in that series in 1936/’37.

The Australians suffered another setback when the promising fast bowler James Pattinson was ruled out of the rest of the Ashes series suffering a stress fracture. It was a pity because Pattinson was always a trier.

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