The Queen was deprived by Andy last month at Wimbledon but her highness was in for a treat day before by another Andy at another grand sporting stage, Lords. The other Andy I am talking about is Andy Strauss. After winning the much important toss at Lords in the second test of Ashes 2009, English captain Andrew Strauss had no doubts in his mind to decide to bat first on the wicket conducive to Swing bowling early on.
His decision worked well when he stitched the record opening partnership with Alastair Cook to go on to score a brilliant 161, his fourth ton against the Aussies and third on his home ground, Lords. After Cook departed 5 runs short of what would have been a fine hundred, Andy Strauss rallied brilliantly with other batsmen even though there was a middle order collapse to put up 425 valuable runs on the score board.
Aussies in reply were blown away by English pacers especially James Anderson. Jamie and Flintoff never allowed the Aussie batsmen to settle. Six of the Aussie batsmen were out trying to hook and landed in a position from where to win this test requires some magic and a miraculous comeback. If they do come back from this worst position, I am doubtless that their efforts will be scripted in Wisden as one of the all time wins. They batted in such a hurry for reasons no other than themselves know that it looked like they had decided to get out before the floodlights go ON. None of them looked convincing and settled against some fine swing bowling display from Jamie Anderson and his fast bowling colleagues although Mike Hussey and Simon Katich tried a bit to bail its team out of misery.
Ricky Ponting’s decision might have looked a bit controversial to some but I wouldn’t complain as it wasn’t an instinctive decision from the umpire as both Rudi Koertzen and Billy Doctrove discussed and referred the decision to their colleague Nigel Llong, the third umpire and rightly so. It was a beauty from Anderson and was a reason to leave the Aussies tottering at 2 down for 10. Ricky Ponting cannot even make a statement against this decision as he already has talked about playing fair and in the right spirit.
At 156/8, with Peter Siddle in the middle along with Nathan Hauritz with his broken finger and the last man Bill Hilfenhaus to follow, chances of holding on or showing some resilience looks very bleak.
The Aussies bullied the Poms on a flat track in Cardiff in first test but certainly looked out of sorts against some fine swing bowling display by the English players here. Will there be a comeback by the wounded Aussies? We will know by end of tomorrow.
English side couldn’t have asked for a better situation than this to win this test against the mighty Australians after 74 years at Lords to give the Queen something to cheer for and to give a fitting farewell to their colleague, Andrew Flintoff.
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