scg

A Test on steroids

Submitted by Rick Eyre on January 5 2004, 4:00 pm

With one day remaining in the Sydney Test, Australia needs 433 runs to win with ten wickets in hand. It shouldn't be possible. Shouldn't.

But this Test - and indeed many Test matches lately - have been so unusual that it can't be absolutely ruled out.

We've seen an exhilirating four days of batting at the SCG. Australia made 474 in their first innings, yet it wasn't enough to avoid giving Indian captain Ganguly the option of enforcing the follow-on (which, as it happened, he elected not to do).

The curse of the retiring captains

Submitted by Rick Eyre on January 4 2004, 4:00 pm

It was nineteen years ago - January 1985 - when Clive Lloyd played his 110th and last Test, his 74th as captain, leading the West Indies against Australia at the Sydney Cricket Ground. A world-beating team at the peak of its form, the West Indies was expected to trounce Australia as they had done throughout that series, sending Lloyd out on a high. Instead, the Aussies won by an innings and 55 runs.