Wednesday 28 October 2015
Monday 19 October 2015
Tuesday 6 October 2015
Top 5: Australia v Bangladesh Moments
With the Australian Cricket Teams tour of Bangladesh now
cancelled due to scumbags, its probably worth taking some time to reflect on
this new cricket rivalry for some of the highlights of past encounters.
While the two teams have been traditionally mismatched,
Bangladesh has been rising like a Phoenix from the Ashes of late, while
Australia is going through (another) transition period due to retirements.
 |
| Though Shane Watsons retirement from Test Cricket is about as relevant as my retirement from Time Traval |
5. The Dizzy Double
A double century is a pretty special effort, a double
century for a tail-end batsman is simply bizarre. A double century from a tail ender in their
last innings, before being dropped starts to enter into mythological and trivia
night territory.
All of this happened in the Second Test at Chittagong in2006 when Jason Gillespie came in as the night watchman at first drop and stuck
around to finish on 201 not out, outscoring the other 5 batsmen (Mike Hussey
did get a forgotten 182) and picking up 5 wickets for the match.
4. Testing the
Territory
For the uninitiated, the Northern Territory is Australia’s
equivalent of the Wild West. For a
start, it’s a Territory, not a State.
Sure, it has its own government, but its basically a big local council.
It’s the place where Crocodile Dundee was from, and that
wasn’t a stretch of the imagination. The
local paper, The NT News, is famous for its hilariously “ocker” headlines and
takes crocodile coverage very seriously.
It’s a very hot and wet place (when it isn’t being a hot and
dry place) that is full of wildlife that is trying to kill you, while also
being sparsely populated.
As a result, cricket doesn’t have a huge presence in the
‘Top End’; its just too bloody hot.
So when it was announced that Australia would be playing
Bangladesh there, the responses were mixed.
The most common response was “Jeez, I’m glad I’m not playing”, closely
followed by “It’s too bloody hot”.
The two-test and three-ODI series were both swept by
Australia.
3. Steve Waugh
A notable part of the NT Test Series was Steve Waugh scoring
a century, making him the first player to score a test century against 9 other
Test playing nations.
2. Alok Kapali in the
Tsunami game
The Tsunami fundraising matches of 2005 were an example of
the ICC actually doing something right, raising funds to help those impacted by
the Boxing Day tsunami of 2004.
Perhaps the ICC operates best in crisis mode? it would
explain why they create so many.
Alok Kapali, the first Bangladesh cricketer to take a Test
hat-trick (there’s another one for the Trivia night), was selected for the game
as part of the Asian XI; highlighting his and his countries emergence as a
cricketing nation.
With the MCG game played in front of 78,000 people, it
announced Bangladesh to Australia and the world.
1.
Going
kaka in Dhaka
Australia’s tour of the UK in 2005 isnt one that is
remembered fondly in Australia for a multitude of reasons.
Firstly, we lost the Ashes for the first time in 18 years,
though the series was possibly the best ever.
Losing the Ashes set in place a number of retirements and
changes in the team which it took nearly 8 years to properly recover from.
On top of this, Shane Watson created global mirth and
questioning of the fortitude of Australian cricketers for the first time, by
sleeping on the floor of a team mates room because he thought he’d seen a
ghost.
Another highlight (lowlight?) of the tour was Australias ODI
loss to Bangladesh, one of Bangladesh’s greatest victories to that point.
Australia obviously weren’t taking the tour very seriously,
with Andrew Symonds ruled out on the morning of the match for being too drunk
or hung-over, whichever came first.
Still, full credit to Bangladesh for the win & one which
helped establish their place on the International Cricket circuit.
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