When I went to bed last night, Australia were 301-3.
When I woke up this morning, they were 369 all out and India were…88-4.
I am pretty sure I audibly groaned when I saw the overnight scores on my phone.
Now that’s it, the series is well and truly over. I no longer have any hope of India storming back into the series. In Adelaide, and it breaks my heart to say this, India should probably rest the veterans, and let the kids have a go.
And with that, the Australian summer ends.
There will be thousands of pages written over the next few weeks dissecting just what exactly happened in Melbourne, in Sydney, in Perth…and honestly that should all be fascinating reading, and I am already excited to see what India’s test side looks like when they next travel outside of the sub-Continent (Zimbabwe in the summer of 2013 – a full 18 months to figure things out.)
I probably will not watch tonight, and honestly I probably won’t watch as much of the Adelaide test as I had the earlier tests, though really I should take full advantage of cricket in Oceania while I can…there won’t be a test in the region until…hold on…I’lll only have to wait a couple weeks, as Zimbabwe and New Zealand start their one and only test on the 26th of January…I am excited already.
On the other side of the earth, there is another drubbing happening in the ODI series between South Africa and Sri Lanka.
The hosts took a 2-0 lead today in East London, despite a better performance from Sri Lanka (236-6 is leagues better than 43 all out, of course.)
I have a serious cricketing soft spot for Sri Lanka, and I really do hope they can turn the series around. But that 43 all out against in Paarl the other day was truly disheartening.
Not ten months ago they were in the World Cup Final – beating England by 10 wickets in the quarterfinals, and demolishing New Zealand in the semifinals. And they were World Cup Finalists in 2007, as well. ODI is their format – and seeing players such as Dilshan and Sangakkara and Jayawardene and Chanidmal (the same Chandimal who scored a century against England at Lord’s this past summer) collapse in such an…historic…way, was shocking.
And it was historic: for it was the fourth lowest score in the history of the format (3,226 ODIs over 41 years) (actually it tied the fourth lowest total – Pakistan were also all out for 43 against the West Indies at Cape Town in…1993…err, doesn’t count.)
(Also, interestingly enough the three lower scores in an ODI innings were all against Sri Lanka:
In ODI #2122, Zimbabwe all out for 35 against Sri Lanka at Harare in April of 2004; in ODI #1958, Canada were all out for 36 against Sri Lanka at, hey, at Paarl (!!) in February of 2003; while in ODI #1776 Zimbabwe were all for 38 against Sri Lanka at Colombo in December of 2001.)
(Of the five innings mentioned above, only Sri Lanka’s this week happened in the 2nd innings.)
But I digress:
What exactly is going on with Sri Lanka? Their downward spiral has been just as violent as India’s, if not more so. A topic to look into for another post, for sure.
(Yes, I am thinking about starting to research these posts before I go, instead of researching as a write which can be quite time consuming.)
And that’s all I really have for today, tune in tomorrow when I write about what I had for breakfast.
Limited Overs 