vb series

Year XXVII, Finals II and III, XI days after

Submitted by Rick Eyre on February 26 2006, 2:43 am

For one reason or another, this is the first chance I have had to write up my thoughts on the VB Series finals. I'll turn this into a memory test, and not refer to any source material:

Australia won. Sri Lanka had the series in their grasp until Jayawardene grasped a half-volley off Ponting in Game Two.

Year XXVII boring? What about Year XXII

Submitted by Rick Eyre on February 12 2006, 4:33 am

It's just about time to embark on the post-mortems for the 27th annual Australian ODI triseries. With this in mind, I thought it might be worthwhile to delve deep into the bowels of CricInfo archives and look at an exercise I conducted at the end of the 2000-01 tournament (the Carlton Series as it was called that year).

VB Series, Year XXVII, Final I. Dilshan!

Submitted by Rick Eyre on February 12 2006, 4:16 am

We're one game away from what would be the best thing to happen to Australian cricket in years. A cleansweep drubbing by Sri Lanka in the ODI triseries final.

Of course, we can probably expect Australia to win game two at the SCG and then have an acrimonious game three at the Telstra Dome Gabba on Tuesday. But a two-zip to Sri Lanka would put a big smile on my face, and on many others no doubt.

VB Series, Year XXVII, Games VIII, IX, X, XI and XII: blip

Submitted by Rick Eyre on February 11 2006, 5:20 am

That annual ritual of playing twelve games to eliminate one team from a three-team competition is over for another year. Graeme "The Mouth" Smith takes the South Africans home after Sri Lanka took the bonus points that mattered. Australia hasn't lost a BH/CUB/VB finals series since 1993. Fingers crossed for the Moody one.

VB Series, Year XXVII, Games III, IV, V, VI and VII: Go Baghdatis!

Submitted by Rick Eyre on January 27 2006, 4:20 pm

Sorry guys, but I have been finding the Australian Open far more interesting than the blandness of the VB Series thus far. I'm really enjoying watching Marcos Baghdatis in action. He's just won a rain-interrupted (and what a time for that to happen) semi against David Nalbandian for the right to be hammered by Roger Federer on Sunday night (or Nicolas Kiefer if he's very, very lucky). The Guardian did an over-by-over of the tennis if you don't know what I'm talking about.