In these days of battling for live cricket telecast rights and expensive corporate sponsorships, to say nothing of expensive tickets for stadium spectators, it is not in the interests of many that a test match should be over in just three days and one hour. So much money is riding on live cricket telecasts, that some experts believe that it is a deliberate ploy to make the kind of wickets that will not be as much of a challenge to batsmen and will last for the full complement of 5 days. This however makes for less exciting test matches, which this first Test of the Trans Tasman cup at the Gabba certainly was! We bring at Cricket360 bring you a cricket special report to sum up the proceedings of the first test.

Since the first test of between Australia and New Zealand ended early on day four, both teams are perhaps using the time to take stock of a match which will certainly have the batsmen introspecting. The live cricket action was a match that was riveting for spectators, exhilarating for bowlers who for once dominated the proceedings and perhaps harrowing for the batsmen, a majority of whom failed to perform.

Tim Southee for New Zealand and Mitchell Johnson for Australia starred in this thrilling match which became a showcase for cricket’s usually unsung heroes; the bowlers. Whereas the attention and the kudos usually go to batsmen, this time around it was the bowlers who dictated the twists and turns of a match where all but a few of the batsmen looked at sea. While the Kiwi batting performance was undeniably poor (156 all out and 177 all out), the Aussies can’t have had very much to cheer about from their batting performance either (214 all out and 268 all out).

Michael Clark and Simon Katich were the saving grace for Australia whose live scoreboard of both innings was littered with ducks and single digits scores. For New Zealanders, the batting performance was even more discouraging, with not a single batsman crossing the 50 mark in their first innings and only Ross Taylor doing so in their second innings.

As for the slow over rate problem that beleaguered the Aussie side in India continues to dog their steps in Australia as well. A cricket update of this match showed that the Aussies faced a fine for a slow over rate in this test match as well, making it two test matches in a row where the Aussies face such a fine. And this time skipper Ricky Ponting can’t even hide behind the excuse of what he termed as ‘Conditions in India’ for their slow over rate. To help figure out what is causing the problem of a slow over rate for the Aussies, they even appointed an observer to analyze how the team used or rather wasted its time on the field.

The upcoming cricket test match at Adelaide will show whether the observer was of any use to the Aussies. We at Cricket 360 will keep you posted.

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3.25 Copyright (C) 2007 Alain Georgette / Copyright (C) 2006 Frantisek Hliva. All rights reserved."

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