The curtain rises on Brisbane, and another Ashes series begins.
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All the talk on social media yesterday was the Aussie’s disdain for Stuart Broad. He’s a “smug pommie cheat” and so on.
Unfortunately for Australia, they learned a very hard lesson last night: never give “bulletin board material” to an opposition player as good as Broad.
And, yes, he is that good – he has been taking wickets at the highest level for more than five years now – and firing him up – waking the sleeping lion as it were – was simply a terrible idea. And yesterday as I watched “Barbie” rip – and I mean RIP – through the Australian top order – taking five wickets a long the way – I just sat there shaking my head and thinking: let sleeping dogs lie next time, eh?
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Australia, for their part, ended the day honors even in my mind. 273/8 is not ideal, but it also isn’t all that bad considering they were 153/6 at tea. Haddin’s calm 78 off of 132 pulled them out of the fire and, honestly, is my favorite kind of innings in cricket. The grizzled veteran comes in, sets up shop with his team on the ropes, and bats on and on and on.
The bad news here for Australia is the kind of innings we saw from Haddin is few and far between. On most days, the bottom order collapses all out for 200 and that’s that. This does not bode well for the Aussies for the rest of the series.
Until tomorrow.
Limited Overs 