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Two Winters and One Summer of English Cricket and Continued Adventures
Curlarge:
--- Quote from: Logie66 on March 25, 2012, 14:01:37 PM ---
Some pictures to set the scene;
The view from my room:
The beach at Unawatuna, apparently one of the top rated beaches in the world.
--- End quote ---
Brrrrrr.....looks chiily and very un appealing....................(NOT)
Logie66:
Sri Lanka - Galle Test Day 1
Following the interesting drive to the ground in the morning; the normal mayhem and carnage was again present ! I will attempt to catch a Tuk-Tuk (Rickshaw) to the ground one morning and video the experience for everyone to see; a boycott was underway by the Barmy Army, a protest at the rise in prices to £25 for the day. The Army camped up on the fort overseeing the ground.
Unfortunately this had no or little effect, the numbers of England supporters in Sri Lanka is high, filling most of the ground. The covered areas that we were located in were heaving with supporters, the first three days are apparently sold out.
You have to wonder what would happen if the English fans stopped following the team at Test matches, with the exception of the series against Pakistan in Dubai and Adu Dhabi grounds are full or mostly full. This following appears to sustain the smaller countries, especially someone like Sri Lanka so in some ways I can understand them lifting prices, it has to set them up well when England come to town.
As for the cricket, it was a long hot day. Jimmy Anderson taking two wickets in successive balls in the third over to get England off to a flying start, after the additional wicket by Broad, no one team took overall control. Without many chance appearing we got a lucky break after lunch with Anderson deflecting the ball on to the stumps to run out the Sri Lankan batsmen backing up.
Mahela Jayawardene then brought the Sri Lankans back into the game, surviving a chance off Swann which didn"t go to hand. His general class shone through and he took the attack to the England bowlers, dispatching the bad balls to the boundary, a mixture of fours and sixes. A missed caught and bowled by Anderson just before he reached his hundred was the only other chance until later in the day that Jayawardene presented in his masterclass.
So the Test is fairly even at the close, we could have been batting, but the clown antics of Monty in the field put that to bed, as Jayawardene looking to raise the pace of scoring gave two chances that most of us would have caught !! The Local forecast is predicting another two hot dry days with a chance of showers on Thursday, the game is evenly poised with a slight advantage to England as batting first Sri Lanka would have liked a few more runs considering the number of wickets that have fallen.
Logie66:
Another morning of clear blue skies, it"s going to be a scorcher again !
Yesterday at the lunch time interval our tour hostesses arrived with a local takeaway, with the half board my only purchases are water, soft drinks, ice cream and beer ;D
At the ground the beer is 75p a cup, cheaper than the other three items I mentioned, happy days.
Logie66:
The start of the day was marred by the lack of any organisation from the Sri Lankan Sricket Authorities, none of the tour companies seats are reserved and some interlopers snuck into our area today causing some dissatisfaction for some of our party who arrived late ! Obviously over selling the tickets and making the most whilst not assisting the official tour parties, didn"t affect myself but some were put out.
England duly saw off the last two wickets this morning, even though Sri Lanka advanced past three hundred, Anderson taking another five for in a test innings. He know stands alone as the fifth highest wicket taker in English cricket and will surpass Ian Botham at some point in the next two years if he continues to avoid injury. A major achievement for a player that came back from being the young new hope, who was left out of the side and suffered a severe back injury and may have already beaten Botham without those.
Having seen the Sri Lankans post a better total than expected, expectations were high that England would challenge that total and put the home team under some pressure. Unfortunately this didn"t turn out to be the case, Cook plsyed down the wrong line to a ball that didn"t really do that much. Trott had a brain rush and danced down the wicket to be stumped and left lying on the floor in humiliation, up to this point he had looked solid. Strauss who was looking in good form decided to play a pre-meditated sweep to the spinner Herath, not the right ball and even after review was found to be out plum. So Pietersen was to be the saviuour, nope left a gap between bat and pad clean bowled.
So Bell the man who had shown no form recently then showed that runs could be scored, although he did have a blip about fifth ball playing the most awful shot ! But after that he started to use his feet to the spinner and started to look in no trouble as boundary after boundary flowed from his bat.
The only problem was that his partners at the other end kept walking back to the pavilion, as the winter hoodoo of a spinner seemed to come back to haunt the England batsmen, both Prior and Patel were both deceived by the flight of Herath and were caught in front both going back to good length balls, only Broad offered any resistance as he dispatched ball after ball to the boundary, only to fall foul of another attempted sweep, much to the disgust of the supporters around me.
So another spinner in the sub-continent took the majority of the wickets, Herath with six, deceiving the England batsmen and playing mind games with their confidence.
pables:
Great read Don, I hear Strauss wishes he hadn"t got the leg bye as that"s why the Indians took the review! ::)
Enjoy the weather m8 and see you soon!
Ian
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