Cricket Life

Scorecard & Cricket Highlights India defeated on merit the firm favourites, winning a low-scoring match by 43 runs. It was an absorbing game of increasing drama and finally of much emotion. The result, as surprising as, on the day, it was convincing, had much to do with the mental pressures of containment in limited-overs cricket. Amarnath was named Man of the Match by Mike Brearley for a stabilising innings of 26 against hostile fast bowling after the early loss of Gavaskar, followed by his taking three late West Indian wickets, Dujon's being especially important. Dujon and Marshall had lifted West Indies, needing 184 to win, from 76 for six to 119 for six, a recovery based on the calm application of sound batting principles and one which was threatening to achieve after all the result which everyone had expected. Lord's, groomed like a high-born lady, bathed in sunshine and packed to capacity, was at its best when Lloyd won the toss and invited India to bat:...

Scorecard & Highlights Day 1 Almost as if to make up for their horror final day at Lord's, England had the first day of their fantasies at Headingley. James Anderson cast a swing-bowling spell over the top order, reducing India to 21 for 3 in the 11th over, to immediately send the opposition into defence mode. Although Rohit Sharma and Ajinkya Rahane threatened, briefly, to rebuild, the supporting England seamers then came in and wiped out the last seven India wickets for 22 runs, to have them 78 all out - the third-lowest total India have ever made after choosing to bat first. When England bowled, conditions seemed exceedingly seamer-friendly, the pitch and the atmosphere allowing the ball to move just enough and late enough to get new batters nicking, rather than missing. But then when India's quicks had the ball, the surface appeared half-decent - even good - to bat on. Rohit - India's top-scorer - batted out 105 balls for his 19; Haseeb Hameed needed onl...

  Scorecard & Cricket Highlights  At The Oval, August 24, 25, 26, 28, 29. Drawn. Toss: Australia. An autumnal gloom descended on Kennington SE11 like a symbolic final curtain to close yet another English summer of despair and emphatic failure. The deteriorating visibility concluded the one-sided series with 20.5 overs remaining and spared England from an outside chance of another beating by an ultra-professional Australian side seeking to embellish its regaining of the Ashes with a fifth victory. It was widely believed that Gower would now resign the captaincy which the new chairman of selectors, E. R. Dexter, had conferred on him with great expectations 146 days earlier, thereby eliminating himself from the leadership of England's winter tour to the West Indies. Instead, Gower said he would ponder his position and then discuss his future with the selectors. Dexter himself amazed a defeat-saddened nation by insisting, during his post-match oratory, "I am not a...

  Scorecard & Cricket Highlights Toss: Australia. Test debuts: England M.A.Atherton, D.E.Malcolm The bad luck which seems to accompany a side guilty of bad play (or should it be the other way round?) struck again for England when Small withdrew on the eve of the match, thus preserving their 100 per cent record of being unable to choose from the originally selected squad in every Test in 1989. Although Thomas was called up in Small's place, in the event he was named as twelfth man, which left England with the inexperienced new-ball pairing of Fraser, playing in his third Test, and Malcolm, winning his first cap. Atherton was the only other débutant, the selectors having responded to calls for a major transfusion of new blood with little more than a smear. No player contracted to go to South Africa had been considered for selection, and Gooch had been omitted to rediscover his form with his county. On a flat, grassless pitch expected to assist the spinners as the m...

 Scorecard & Cricket Highlights Toss: England. Australia's win at Old Trafford gave them the series and the Ashes, and Border thus became the first captain since W. M. Woodfull in 1934 to win back the trophy in England. It was a success which was all the more noteworthy because few people in this country gave the tourists much chance of victory when their party was first announced. Paradoxically, England played more positively on the third and fifth days than they had at any stage of the series up to that point, and centuries were scored by Smith, on his return after injury, and Russell who, apart from keeping wicket immaculately and at times spectacularly, registered a maiden first-class hundred, the fourth Englishman to do so in a Test match. It was a game played not only beneath the familiar Manchester clouds but also others of an even more threatening nature hovering over Gower, the England captain. He had been the object of an increasingly virulent campaign ...

Scorecard & Cricket Highlights Toss: Australia. While making allowances for the poor showing of their batsmen in the opening two Tests of the series, there was no conceivable reason why England should not have arrested their losing run once wet weather caused the loss of ten hours' play on days two and three. Yet the final morning dawned with the home side in grave danger of being forced to follow on, and only spirited tail-end resistance spared them further embarrassment. If the Australians possessed any lingering doubts about their ability to protect their two-nil lead in the series, they were quickly dispelled after Border brought to an end a nine-match sequence of losing the toss to Gower in international matches. With an unchanged and confident side, he was able to choose to bat first on a placid surface while England were still trying to regroup their resources. Broad and Jarvis had been discarded after Lord's and the vastly experienced Lamb and Botham...

  Cricket Highlights & Scorecard Toss: England. Victory not only gave Border's side a 2-0 lead, a position from which England had never come back to win or even draw an Ashes series, but continued the home side's dismal record at the game's headquarters this century against their oldest cricket rivals. England's sole success remained 1934; 21 other contests had brought Australia nine victories, with twelve draws. The tourists confirmed their Headingley form, while England, again badly hit by injuries, took a different route to defeat. Gower's side struggled badly for three days before staging a spirited fightback which, with a little more help from the rain on Tuesday, would have earned them a reprieve. Gower, cast as the villain for rushing out of Saturday night's press conference to go to the theatre, was hailed as a hero on Monday for scoring his fifteenth Test century. But character and courage were not enough to repair the earlier damage ...

Cricket Highlights & Scorecard Toss: England. England's first match under the new management team headed by E. R. Dexter, and with Gower restored as captain, fell sadly into the sorry pattern of so much that had gone before in that they contributed significantly to their own downfall. It was their fourth successive defeat at Headingley, where the Australians had not won since 1964, and the outcome extended to nine the sequence of positive Test results on the ground. Australia, very much the outsiders at the start, outplayed England to an embarrassing extent. England's plans were thrown into confusion by injuries to Botham and Gatting, for whom Smith and Barnett were the replacements, but it could not be argued realistically that this misfortune had a serious influence on the outcome. More important were two major errors of judgement by Gower and his advisers. In the first place they left out the spinner, Emburey, so that the attack was desperately short of v...

Cricket Highlights & Scorecard At Lord's, May 11, 12, 13, 14, 15. Drawn. Toss: England. Test debuts: S. I. Mahmood; C. K. Kapugedera. Patronised as mere fodder for England's seam bowlers in the damp and dewy pastures of Lord's in early May, Sri Lanka's batsmen pulled off one of the finest acts of escapology since Clint Eastwood bust out of Alcatraz. Asked to follow on, 359 behind, after lunch on the third day, they survived 199 overs and three new balls on a pitch which turned out to be completely moribund. In truth, however, England's scissorhands fielders should have been assisting the police with their inquiries into aiding and abetting the fugitives' getaway. Nine dropped catches - six in that second innings - expedited Sri Lanka's safe passage from the tightest of corners after they had been outplayed for two and a half days. Flintoff, still deputising as captain for the long-term injury absentee Vaughan, excused England's inexplicable ba...

Cricket Highlights & Scorecard Day 1 Having been asked to bat when they wanted to bowl, and having negotiated rainy and overcast conditions, India finished day one at Lord's looking healthy in all respects - on score, on scoring rate, and on wickets in hand. Much of that was down to their unbeaten centurion KL Rahul, who walked off in bright sunshine, having played a part in two century stands. That wickets-in-hand part was particularly significant after they decided to replace the injured Shardul Thakur with Ishant Sharma, effectively cutting their batting down to six specialists alongside Ravindra Jadeja. It was a bold move on many fronts, especially if they believed the dank conditions in the morning were more suited to their bowlers; it was either a show of faith or calculated pressure heaped on the likes of Cheteshwar Pujara and Ajinkya Rahane, who have struggled for form lately. Whatever it was, it needed the openers to click, and click they did. Rahul and Roh...