THOUGH the two Test matches followed an amazingly similar pattern, there were few who kept an eye on the happenings in Sri Lanka while they had the option of watching the Ashes encounter between England and Australia. Let me confess, I was not among those few.
With a second-string West Indian side touring Sri Lanka, there was no excitement on the cards ever since the team landed there. But their performance in the first Test on the tour was enough to ward off any third-party interest that might have been there. There was no such parallells to be found in the Ashes which was something every follower of the game was looking forward to.
But while I hardly watched much of the game, I did follow it through newspaper reports, and what struck me while going through them was the striking similarities in the flow and manner that the two Tests adopted despite having been played a world apart.
For starters, they both got off with pretty low scores in the first innings; Australia and England scoring 190 and 150, while Sri Lanka and the West Indies managing an even more paltry 150 and 148 runs respectively. The third innings turned out to be the best outing in either Tests, with Australia scoring 384, and Sri Lanka piling up 375-7. Faced with the prospect of chasing huge scores in the fourth innings, the sides batting second in each case were simply not up to it; England managing 180, the West Indies putting together just 137. The margins of victory were almost identical at 239 for Australia, and 240 in favour of Sri Lanka.
Besides, both the matches were disrupted by showers and bad light, but still ended on day four. The total number of overs having been bowled were almost identical at 257 and 263 in England and Sri Lanka respectively. I am not much into statistics, I have never been, but the apparent flow of the game got me excited and the more I probed, the more interesting it got.
Perhaps the only difference in the two Tests was in terms of the orientation of the chief destroyers. It was Muttiah Muralitharan, with ten wickets in the match, who turned the heat for the Sri Lankans, and was supported in doing so by pacemen Chaminda Vaas, who got six. For the Australians, though, it was Glenn McGrath, the paceman, who got nine in the match, and was supported by the spin of Shane Warne, who got six. The two pairs, however, represent the time-proven best bowling combinations for the two respective sides. I can go on, really, but then it will touch bizarre lengths, so I leave it at that. With their performance in the first Ashes Test, however, the Australians have once again silenced their critics who were calling into question the average age of the outfit, specially that of McGrath, and had called him a spent force. With nine wickets in the match — demolishing the top order in the first innings, and bulldozing the tail in the second — McGrath reached his career milestone of five hundred Test wickets in great style. It would be hard to find a comment against his ability and commitment for the rest of the tour.
On the contrary, McGrath has sent early warning signals for batsmen around the world, stressing that he was still enjoying his day out there in the middle, and that there are no retirement plans under consideration. In fact, he has gone on record with his desire to have as many as one thousand wickets in international cricket, which means another 168 wickets to his existing tally of 508 Test wickets and another 324 in the One Day version. At 35 years and six months, McGrath is definitely not going any younger, but his main weapon over the years has been accuracy, and not pace. The target he has set for himself is indeed tough, but not impossible.
THOUGH the two Test matches followed an amazingly similar pattern, there were few who kept an eye on the happenings in Sri Lanka while they had the option of watching the Ashes encounter between England and Australia. Let me confess, I was not among those few.
Perhaps the only difference in the two Tests was in terms of the orientation of the chief destroyers. It was Muttiah Muralitharan, with ten wickets in the match, who turned the heat for the Sri Lankans, and was supported in doing so by pacemen Chaminda Vaas, who got six. For the Australians, though, it was Glenn McGrath, the paceman, who got nine in the match, and was supported by the spin of Shane Warne, who got six. The two pairs, however, represent the time-proven best bowling combinations for the two respective sides. I can go on, really, but then it will touch bizarre lengths, so I leave it at that. With their performance in the first Ashes Test, however, the Australians have once again silenced their critics who were calling into question the average age of the outfit, specially that of McGrath, and had called him a spent force. With nine wickets in the match — demolishing the top order in the first innings, and bulldozing the tail in the second — McGrath reached his career milestone of five hundred Test wickets in great style. It would be hard to find a comment against his ability and commitment for the rest of the tour.
