Friday, 13th January 2012 – unlucky number, but just another date, and, a cricket day!!

Awoke to an empty house, cloudy and overcast outside, and the cool nature of the past few days continues in our unusually non-summer type weather!  Some people regard Friday 13^th [of any month] as a bad omen, but I prefer to think of it as simply another Friday, or even just another day. The quietness of this neighbourhood has been disturbed over the past week or so by road-works out in the adjoining street – still haven’t worked out exactly what it is they are doing, but seems to be a necessity for as lot of heavy machinery!  But at least the crowd of young people who have been living opposite us here – all of whom seem to have hotted up and noisy cars which roar up and down the street at all hours of the day and night  –  they seem to have gone away on a holiday, or, more hopefully, have simply gone!!!   I’ll be pessimistic, and assume the latter is not the case!

Third cricket test – Australia vs India, Day 1 at the WACA in Perth.   Australia won the Toss, elected to bowl. Four fast bowlers, Lyons out of the 11. The teams for this match are”   AUSTRALIA (World ranking: fourth)    Squad – Michael Clarke (captain), David Warner, Ed Cowan, Shaun Marsh Ricky Ponting,, Mike Hussey ,Brad Haddin , Peter Siddle , Ben Hilfenhaus ,Ryan Harris, Mitchell Starc,    Coach: Mickey Arthur          INDIA (World ranking: second)  Squad – Mahendra Singh Dhoni [ (captain), Virender Sehwag ], Gautam Gambhir [Ajinkya Rahane [], Rahul Dravid [], Sachin Tendulkar [, VVS Laxman [], Virat Kohli [Rohit Sharma [], Pragyan Ojha [], Ravichandran Ashwin, Ishant Sharma [], Umesh Yadav, R Vinay Kumar, Abhimanyu Mithun [ s ], Wriddhiman Saha, Zaheer Khan   Coach: Duncan Fletcher.  Another good start  for the Aussies, with Indioa all out for a low score, and then an unbroken century partnership by the two Australian openers.

Stumps Score: Day 1:  India: 161.  Australia:  0 for 149 with David Warner not out 104, and Ed Cowan not out 40. The Warner century was the 3rd fastest Test century [in terms of balls faced] in Test Match history, scoring his 100 in 69 balls. Warner, who came to notice as a very aggressive 20/20 cricketer about 4 years ago, has proven to the critics after this performance thar he is of the Test elite as well.The current top 5 listing shows

• 56 balls  –  Viv Richards [West Indies] versus England, at St Johns in 1985/86
• 67 balls  –  Adam Gilchrist [Australia] versus England at Perth in 2006/07
• 67 balls  –  Jack Gregory [Australia] versus South Africa at Johannesburg, in 1921/22
• 69 balls  –  S Chanderpaul [West Indies] versus Australia, at Georgetown in  2002/03
• 69 balls  –  David Warner [Australia] versus India at Perth in 2011/12

Incidentally, over the last few weeks, there has been a major 20/20 competition going on in Australia involving teams from various cities, etc  – under the title of ‘The Big Bash’ –  the name was enough for me not to take much interest, and the fact that it has been televised on Pay TV meant I couldn’t watch if I’d wanted to, although son, Adam has been following the matches closely. The competition is nearing it’s conclusion, and I actually, without looking up the paper, have no idea which teams have been successful. I’m afraid my principal cricket interest lies still with the Test Cricket genre of the game..