One would have to wonder about the tactics of both captains in the half-hour or so before tea. Ponting gave a rather surprising declaration with the total at 480 as soon as Nathan Hauritz brought up his fifty. Such an odd total at which to declare...
Amid the dog's breakfast that is the international cricket schedule these days, I still get a thrill at the arrival of the Australian Test cricket season, heralded every year since 1974 by the opening day of the Test match at Woolloongabba, Queensland. It's an even greater thrill to see Australia facing the West Indies - or at least it used to be.
Antigua is having a bad trot. Having suffered the humiliation of having a Test match at their wizbang new-ish Sir Vivian Richards Stadium being abandoned because of a dangerous playing surface, they now find that the Man Who Held The Antiguan Economy By The Short And Curlies is in deep trouble with the US legal system.
West Indian batting star and Bangalore Royal Challenger-to-be Shivnarine Chanderpaul had a great 2007 by any measure. He averaged 111 with the bat in Tests, and 76 in one-dayers, where his output included four centuries. A worthy winner, it would seem, of the West Indies Players Association's awards for Test player of the year, ODI player of the year and West Indian International Cricketer of the Year.
That other Twenty20 slogfest has just concluded in a gross mismatch at the Stanford CC, Coolidge, Antigua. Trinidad and Tobago has won the 2008 Stanford 20/20 after thrashing Jamaica in the final Sunday night.
Japan has been sidestepping international whaling bans for two decades under the euphemistic banner of "scientific research". Japan intends to add humpback whales to their culinary scientific research list later this year.
Among the countries Japan has brought on board in their attempts to stack the International Whaling Commission are six in the Caribbean: Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, Grenada, St Kitts and Nevis, St Lucia, St Vincent and the Grenadines. No doubt there's a promise of foreign aid in there. Maybe they'll build sushi bars in all those brand new cricket stadia.
CARIBBEAN: Special Cricket Visa Irks Tourism Industry
- PORT OF SPAIN, Jan 29 (IPS) - It's billed as the third biggest sporting event in the world after the football World Cup and the Olympics.
[Inter Press Service]
Throughout the Ashes, I'll be watching the Prime Ministerial website for cricketing references in John Winston Howard's media interviews. I'll also be keeping score on the number of references he makes to Darfur or any other major African conflict. (As regular followers of this blog will already be aware, the number of times that John Howard has used the word "Darfur" in public as recorded either in Hansard or in the pm.gov.au transcript archives currently stands at zero.)
Let's kick it off with JWH's interview with Virginia Trioli at 2BL ABC Local Radio Sydney on November 13:
Allen Stanford's multi-million dollar 20/20 extravaganza has become the latest entrant to the Pantheon of Cricket Vaporware - those would-be cash cows that disappear after, if they're lucky, one outing, or if they're unlucky - none.
The Stanford 20/20 Super Star match, set down between West Indies and South Africa for November 10 with a winner take-all purse of €3.9 million, has been cancelled. The reason will shock you, so sit down.
Collis King would be best remembered for being the batsman at the other end as Viv Richards blazed away in the 1979 World Cup Final at Lord's. It's more than a quarter of a century since he last played for the West Indies, and he's now in his fifties, but last weekend he turned up in central Queensland for a seven-a-side cricket competition.