Saturday 18 July 2009

Has the time for poms to become the Lords of Lords come?

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.

Saturday 4 July 2009

Andy Wins. But its Roddick not Murray.

The Sun went down slowly spreading a blanket of shadow all over the centre court and with it the British tennis hopes shattered and casted the pale of gloom all over Britain last evening when Andy Murray lost to veteran Andy Roddick 6-4, 4-6, 7-6, 7-6 in the semi-finals of the men’s Wimbledon Championships.

So Queen Elizabeth’s long-awaited return to Wimbledon will have to wait; it looks as if, for one more year. Andy Murray, the young Briton she had hoped to watch from the Royal Box in Sunday’s final, will not be taking part in the festivities after all.

Murray came back one set down after losing the first to take the second triggering hopes of yet another Murray come back. Engaged the crowd beautifully and they responded with huge roars of cheer every time their home hero played a winner. But Murray’s remarkable, counterpunching game was not quite as lethal as usual, as Roddick put 75 percent of his first serves in play and cleverly picked his spots to attack instead of trying to batter his way past the lanky Scotsman on a point by point basis.

Murray couldn’t find answer to an inspired performance from Roddick. Perhaps Murray was passive and waited for Roddick to commit mistakes rather than forcing the veteran to make errors.

Clearly it was the case of succumbing to pressure as the whole of British media had built up the hype so much so that every journalist had started writing about the Federer-Murray finals. It certainly might have taken a toll on Murray and the effect was evident in his performance.

Before the match, Roddick was relaxed and at his usual best in the pre-match interviews, talked about how he has clearly moved to a higher plane. Last year at Wimbledon, he made his earliest exit, with a second round blow out to Janko Tipsaravic saving his best for the press, where he talked about the pain of becoming a second-tier player.

“When you’ve seen the Rolling Stones from the front row, and then all of a sudden you’re like, you know, seven or eight rows back and there’s a really tall guy in front of you waving his hands and screaming, you can’t see much,” Roddick said then. “It’s not going to be as good as the other shows.”

So what row is he in now?

“Getting closer,” Roddick said. “I can see what Mick Jagger is wearing now.”

Roddick cannot ask for more if British fans chant the first name of their home hero Murray on Centre Court at Wimbledon during the men’s finals on Sunday, where Andy Roddick intends to make the best of it.

Andy Roddick has met Roger Federer twice in the Wimbledon finals before and has lost both times. Can he be third time lucky?

Friday 3 July 2009

It was a cat and a cat game.

The cats howled and screamed at the centre court last night when Serena Williams and Elena Dementieva were involved in the slug fest to make it to the finals of Wimbledon Ladies. It was so intense that both players couldn’t stop grunting although a lady spectator pleaded sitting in the first row with her hat on that read “No Grunting Please”.

At the grandest of the stages, it was nothing short of a spectacle. The match was like watching a Quentin Tarantino movie. It was full of fast paced action, suspense thriller and burst of emotions in the best three sets of grueling ladies tennis match witnessed so far at SW19 in a long time. It sure will qualify easily to go down as one of the best ladies matches played ever.

Elena Dementieva pushed Serena Williams to the hilt. Stretched her from corner to corner, made her run from baseline to the net, asked her questions, make her earn her points in the match. Serena was not given any freebies as her previous opponents did in this year’s campaign. She surely had an easy run till she came up to meet the Olympic gold medalist last night.

Serena dropped her first set of the tournament and was seen vulnerable at times. She had to come up with something extra ordinary to save couple of match points against her in the third and she did come up with a winner in one of the most extra ordinary rallies we have seen in a long time. Serena won in the end proving experience is the ingredient required and not the exuberance.

That said, Elena proved how difficult she can be and made Serena look struggling till the end. If there was anything that separated both players, it was that rally which Serena won when it mattered in the third. That’s it. It was that close.

In the end, when Serena won the semis 6-7, 7-5, 8-6 to set up a date with her sibling yet again in the finals, Elena walked away winning more friends, supporters and admirers world over.

I don’t know whether Elena won a supporter in Vijay Amritraj as he was throughout the match, kept cheering the Williams; both the Williams on court as well as those Williams in the box often coughing away on the microphone under the influence of anti-histamine scaring his colleague Alan Wilkins.

But Elena did win yours truly with a magnificent display of tennis shots throughout the match.