4/1/11 the day I got back to Perth was a holiday, so my first job was to return the hire car, managing to buy an aussie wicket in the test match between parking it and going back to check on the score as they were busy. Back to the room to watch the test match, a bit of a waste though in my defence I was a bit knackered…
The following day was the first game at the WACA, so grabbed breakkie and a subway lunch in my cool bag and headed for the free bus stop next to the hospital, but as I came out of the hotel, it was raining! Back inside to grab my waterproof, just hanging it on my head due to the temperature – kept my england cap and rucksack dry. At the ground the girls were just thinking about tossing the coin when the rain came again. We got going eventually with a reduced game and a reduced side, Reading batsman Claire Taylor out through a shoulder injury sustained in the last warmup game. That meant a rather experimental batting order which struggled to chase down the aussie total and was saved by the rain late in the afternoon under the lights meaning we lost on D/L. A beer at the interval stung the pocket whilst refreshing the thirst – 12 bucks for a beer and a lemonade to make a shandy is the equivalent of about £8!
6/1 another cricket match and this time we batted with no weather issues, but despite the skipper Lottie making 90 and Trev from Reading making her first 50, we only made 20 more than they had scored from 6 less overs two days before. One of out fielders took a tumble in the field and it was deja vu as it looked like she dislocated her shoulder, just as she had at Derby last year. It proved to be nowhere near enough as their new teenage opener who we had been questioning why she had replaced a seasoned opener, proved why hitting an unbeaten century, her first! They won with 9 wickets to spare and we all trudged off into the darkness depressed, me dropped back at my hotel by one of Readings old players, now living back in oz.
8/1 up to the WACA on a sunday, walking all the way in the already hot heat with the breeze tossing up all the leaf litter, drifting into my sandals and causing a similar blister to last years. They wanted to bat, but this time we got them under pressure, Ish taking the first two and getting the first five out for less than 50 and although they got a little away, it always seemed chaseable. Unfortunately we had lost more players to injury on top of the two shoulders, Nunnie to leg issues and in the game, Trig and Boggie left the field leaving us with the Head of Womens Cricket at the ECB fielding in someone elses number, causing some confusion… Fortunately she seems to have kept up her fitness since retiring after winning the ashes in 2005 and did ok, but second nature took over as she seemed to start setting the field! Everyone contributed and with three england players on the field – one running for Trig – we chased down their target and recovered a bit of pride heading into the T20 series.
1st T20 we won quite convincingly at Adelaide and then the boys put on a thriller, both good games for the telly, if they got on here with the floods, with two stonking catches by our girls and some good sixes and a last ball finish by the boys. A couple of the girls came to sit with us during the mens game to catch up with their folks and take their congratulations.
2nd T20 Apparently we were going to get a game starting late and the telly said they were still going to cover it, albeit on one of the digital channels so I stayed on the sofa and cheered the team on to a 2-0 lead in the five game series! Had a nice nap in the gap to the boys game, again a last ball thriller, but this time we ended up on the wrong side.
the girls has wrapped up the T20 series 3-0 with two to play!
4th T20 live on the telly – looked great there, wall to wall blue skies and the girls managed a similar total to the day before despite a spectacular collapse of the last seven wickets for about 30 runs and then stopped the aussies from chasing it down to go 4 up.
Bankstown Test
We batted first, and bar a maiden ashes ton from the skipper, the rest were blushing as the pitch was benign and slow and the outfield even slower. Given her well-known knee issues, I think she must have run pretty much all of her 100 not out at the end of the day. Fortunately some of the lower order were doing ok, perhaps following instructions, taking singles to the gaps and keeping the rest of the balls out – the problem is, none of them play anything longer than one day, apart from the ashes and at the end of a long tour having just won 4 of 5 20/20 games, it must be very hard to try to adjust. The following 3 days followed in similar fashion, although our spirits were buoyed by the loss of their wickets quicker than ours and a first innings lead following a declaration to get half an hour at our openers on the end of day two – caught lots of people out, but there is precedent. I passed on the team social back to room for more R&R – going to and from the cricket 40 mins on the train was wiping me out. The last day brought the aussies out in test match mode and despite our early wicket the night before, in some respects batting last suited, they knew what they needed, had all day to get there and the longest time to get into the right mindset. Don’t think it really hit the players until they came home that they had lost them.
crunchcricket 