Heavy scoring in the current Tests.SA 580-4 dec.Tons for Petersen,Kallis test best 224 & De Villiers 16 no.AUS 482-4,Ponting's 1st 100 for 2 years & Clarke 251 no.On good wickets the bowling Sri Lanka & India respectively look weak.
Well who saw any of the first ODI between South Africa and Sri Lanka?
SA posted 301-8 and in reply Sri Lanka got to just 43.
Yeah, on good, proper tracks they aren't the same teams. A lack of pace for one and no bowlers of any real height, whereas we can boost Finn, Broad and Tremlett, SA have Morkel and Australia have Pattinson. Also bowlers of skill like Bresnan, Anderson, Philander and Hilfenhaus helps the three teams.
Sri Lanka are really struggling to perform outside of Asia.With the retirements of Vaas & Murali in the last year or so they lack any star bowlers.More concerning must be the batting,relying too much on Sangakara & Jayawardena.Dilshan's form has been affected by the captaincy
rocksaviour, don't forget that SA have the best bowler in the world in Steyn and a decent spinner in Tahir. Add that to their very good batting line up, and it makes me want to see SA vs England!
Australia are improving, especially their fast bowling with Siddle and Hilfenhaus improving all the time and Pattinson coming up, if their batting can be more consistent and if they can find a icket-taking spinner, the next Ashes will be more competitive! (though England should still win)
As far as SL go, they never perform outside away from home, and I personally think they are really average and overrated and only really rely on a handful of batsmen/bowlers to carry them, and when they don't perform they crumble.
Pakistan vs England is coming up, I expect England to do well in the tests, but Pakistan are probably going to win the ODI and T20 series I reckon
India again couldn't handle a swinging wicket... 161 all out is well below par.
But Australia could
Our lass has trouble with the swinging ball when I'm T-bagging her.
Australia have dropped Ricky Ponting from their one day squad for lack of form.
He was deputising as Captain of the team whilst Michael Clarke was hamstrung, but now that Clarke is ready to return it's Pointing who has be given the chop.
S.Africa's Richard Levi scored the fastest Int. 20/20 century off 45 balls including 13 sixes.Very short boundaries at Hamilton.
It had to come for Ponting, apparently he is calling a news conference at Midnight our time tonight. So we will see what he has to say, perhaps he will retire from ODIs. I know he is focused to play in the Ashes series in 2013 and 2013/14, so he isn't going to be retiring completely of course.
The short boundaries helped that Levi for sure. He may go the same way as Warner and go on from here to the other forms or perhaps he will disappear remember that Loots Bosman had a huge (by T20 standards) innings for SA against us and has been rarely heard of since.
Good point about T20 players that come & go.Much harder for them to step up to Tests.Easier now for Cook to prove everybody wrong & make himself into an International T2
player.