Shamik Das


Friday, December 15, 2006

Déjà vu?

Not even a super-hero can save England now    Geraint Jones suffers another failure with the bat as England toil at the WACA

Perth, Third Test, Second Day:
Australia 244 & 119/1 (Hayden 57*, Ponting 57*) v England 215 (Pietersen 70, Strauss 42; Clark 3-49, Symonds 2-8)


No, not the new Denzel Washington thriller which opens tonight, but the all too familiar feeling among English cricket fans that we've been here before.

Following the successes of day one at the WACA, it was back to usual for England's cricketers, as they foundered with both bat and ball. Instead of ending the day with a 150 run lead they now find themselves facing a 148 run deficit.

Kevin Pietersen was the only Englishman to pass 50, the South Africa born batsman striking a mesmeric 70, with only Andrew Strauss offering any support - unluckily given out caught behind for 42.

Indeed it was England's heroes of the first day - Monty Panesar and Steve Harmison - who put together the biggest partnership of the innings, adding a potentially crucial 40 runs for the last wicket.

Ricky Ponting and Matthew Hayden in perfect harmony en-route to identical scores of 58

However, Matthew Hoggard's dismissal of Justin Langer for a golden duck aside, Panesar and Harmison, together with their colleagues, could not halt the Australian juggernaut second time around - Ricky Ponting and Matthew Hayden scoring 57 runs apiece to put the hosts in a commanding position at the close.

It'll take nothing short of a miracle now to prevent the Aussies reclaiming the urn with two Tests still to play.

Catch the second day's highlights tonight on BBC Two at 11:30pm, and listen to live coverage of day three on Radio 4 198LW and the
BBC Sport website from 2:30am.

1 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Yuk. I'm disgusted. Typical England.

You have replies, by the way...

15 December, 2006 17:48

 

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