27.11.10

Deja Vu

As Hussey and Haddin took the game away from England in the small hours of this morning, it was Michael Vaughan, on TMS, who first mentioned the feeling of deja vu. This was roughly thirty seconds after I and millions of other English cricket followers had thought it. As the crowd noise rose and the scoreboard started to revolve at a pace which England could do nothing to contain, the only thing that could be thought was that it was just like every other Ashes series in Australia that you could really remember.

I deliberately didn't comment here yesterday as I wanted to see how many Hussey finished up with, but his batting on the second day was a timely reminder that while advancing age always affects people in ways that can't be easily felt or defined, it doesn't always whither the way in which they do their job. Hussey has always been a pleasingly compact and technically sure player, and here his fortitude under pressure, judgement and footwork were of a calibre which it's hard to see anyone on the England side, with the possible exception of Ian Bell, who's in the best form of his entire career, matching.

Now, though, at least two of them will have to if England are to avoid defeat. The pitch could be a lot worse and the Australian attack could be a lot better.

But it will be tough.

2 comments:

Dean @ Cricket Betting Blog said...

I'm doing the night shift for a few minutes more and as I write England are 148/0.

Why didn't we do this in the 1st innings?

I hope I'm wrong, but I fear it will be the same old story, a decent fight back, but ultimately not enough.

The damage was done on Day 1.

Brian Carpenter said...

I'm writing with hindsight, but I think we'll be okay to draw the game and move on.

Of course, you should never rule out an England batting collapse, but that Australian attack looks pretty damn average to me. If they collapse to that they'll deserve to lose.

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