jamie goode's wine blog: An incredible day's cricket, but Guy misses out...

Saturday, August 22, 2009

An incredible day's cricket, but Guy misses out...

Spent an incredible day at the Oval yesterday, watching day 2 of the final Ashes test. I was with wine writer Anthony Rose, Decanter editor Guy Woodward and Chris Stroud of Foster's EMEA.

The Oval is a lovely place to watch cricket, and where we were seated was just about perfect, in the Bedser upper. The morning session was uninspiring: England didn't add many runs for their last two wickets, and Australia then batted through to lunch without loss, despite some tight England bowling. And then it started raining.

This was the stage where Guy decided to head back to the office to sign off the latest issue, so he swapped his ticket with his art editor, Patrick. I imagine he now regrets it, because we witnessed one of the most remarkable sessions of Ashes cricket, during which England took 8 wickets for just 72 runs. Broad and Swann did the damage, and it was thrilling stuff.

Shortly after tea, Australia were all out and England batted to close with the loss of three wickets. The game is far from won, yet, but this day certainly swung things in England's favour.

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9 Comments:

At 8:31 AM, Anonymous Keith Prothero said...

The game is won Jamie and my bookie is almost ready to pay out.
Lovely to see Anthony drinking wine out of those plastic glasses--------makes even a fine Chave taste awful!!

 
At 5:48 PM, Anonymous Doug said...

I had the pleasure to go today (Saturday). Brilliant day's cricket and England batted well, but Australia look remarkably resilient. England's bowling is very pedestrian: both Flintoff and Harmison lack their usual fire, Anderson is easy to score off if he drops off line, which leaves a massive responsibility with Broad and Swann. And something has happened to the pitch - where are the demons of the second day?

 
At 8:31 PM, Blogger Nick Oakley said...

There is a new website you can viisit about Australian cricket. here is the link....www.w...ww.w..w

 
At 5:12 PM, Blogger Jamie said...

I dunno Keith - I'd be happy to drink Chave out of a plastic glass, if the alternative is not to drink it at all.

Actually, there's no way you can get Chave at the Oval - they're very strict and won't let you bring your own in, unlike Lords.

Nick, very good...

 
At 8:12 AM, Blogger vijayanand said...

Andrew Flintoff considered to be one among the best all rounder of all times has reiterated his earlier stand on retirement decision. With Australia dominating the fifth Ashes Test which will be a deciding game, there were rumors that Flint off may reconsider his decision.
Flintoff had earlier made up his mind to retire from Test cricket after the current Ashes series, citing the frequent injuries as the reason is firm in his stand. He however did not rule out the possibility of playing four day cricket at national level as a part of Lancashire team. However the eminent all rounder will be continuing playing cricket as far as fifty over game and twenty-twenty version are concerned. Flintoff is a part of IPL Chennai Super Kings team.

 
At 8:39 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Er, thanks for that breaking news...

 
At 11:16 AM, Anonymous Doug said...

One person who deserves a mention in all this is Swann. Commentators call him, slightly patronisingly, cheeky and plucky, but he bowls aggressively and his innings on Saturday was brilliant. He launched himself at the quicks and spinners alike; Siddle practically imploded and Hilfenhaus almost looked like he was ready to give up. Trott cleverly ceded the strike to him and between them they punched the run rate up to 7 or 8 an over during their partnership. It was a terrific display and he justifiably got a standing ovation. If you look at England's batting during this series it is the mid-to-late order which has weighed in with valuable runs (Prior, Broad, Swann and Anderson, in particular) and helped to win the series.

 
At 12:49 PM, Blogger vijayanand said...

Shane Warne – The best bowler Australia has ever produced has opened up his mind to the media. He exposed his discontent regarding umpires. According to the ace spinner barring a few exceptions like Simon Tauter and ASAP Rauf other umpires went awry in terms of performance .Expressing disappointment that the standard of umpiring has deteriorated to the worst extent in the past twenty years of time he opined that though umpiring was a hard job, the performances of the umpires in the Ashes series had been consistently so ordinary. As far as Warne is concerned umpire Billy Bowden whom he expected to deliver correct judgments was also not consistent in performing his duty.
The spinner repents that there are too many instances of such bad judgments, which is increasingly becoming a cause of concern. He directly made a mention of names of umpires Daryl Harper and Billy Bowden, accusing them to be adamant in not confessing their wrong judgments. He also tried to strengthen his claim by mentioning that several players were not having a good opinion about those umpires in their minds. Warne insisted that the umpires should maintain a friendly attitude towards the players by shedding their high-handed attitude Warne also expressed his view repetitively that fifty over match should be withdrawn once for all as if such a change is brought about it would enable the players to spend more time with their families and relieve them from exhaustion.

 
At 1:41 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

And yet more gibberish.

Vijay, are you simply cutting and pasting stories from Indian websites and translating them via Babelfish?

Because that's what it looks like!

The spinner repents that there are too many instances of such bad judgments (!!!)

 

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