Australia managed to beat England by 3-2 in the 5-match One Day International series.
The Kangaroos won the decider easily by 8 wickets yesterday and ended their disappointing tour on a good note.
The conditions were perfect for batting on a gorgeous day at Old Trafford and it was a very good toss to win for England.
The ball was always going to nip around early on, but, after half an hour or so; the batting would have been enjoyable.
It’s not long back when Mitchell Johnson had proved to be sort of unplayable for England.
The Three Lions were just not able to find a way to deal with the left arm speedster when they had faced him in Australia a couple of years back.
But, Johnson might not be able to make the same sort of impact in the Ashes series this time around as he is not going to get the pitches to his liking.
The English pitches will be slow and low and bounce will not be that much of a factor.
James Faulkner is very quickly turning himself into a batting all rounder now. These days in the Indian Premier League, he is batting 5 or 6 for his team Rajasthan Royals and he is delivering for them too.
Faulkner’s biggest strength as a hitter is his bat swing. It’s so fluent that most of the times, the connection happens to be perfect and the ball goes sailing into the stands and, his power too.
Faulkner is such an incredibly strong man that he actually does not need to hit the ball off the meat of the blade to get the maximum value for his shots. His half hits are enough.
Glenn Maxwell’s return in form is the best news for Australia at this stage because if Maxwell is delivering with the bat, it makes them that much more deadly a team to contend with.
In the title game of the Carlton Mid tri series, Maxwell scored 95. The value of that knock was immense just because of the time at which it was played.
English had the chance to win that game right there when Maxwell arrived. If they had got rid of the Victorian and a couple more low order players cheaply, the Aussies would have struggled to get to even 150 on those tricky 22 yards in Perth.
Mitchell Johnson appears to have been affected by the amount of workload that has been put on him this summer by his captain Steven Smith.
The ferocious fast bowler is starting to collapse a little bit and the reports are coming through that the Australian team management might keep him out of the Sydney test match on precautionary grounds.
In the three test matches against India, Johnson has not bowled with the same kind of pace that he had been bowling with during the 2013-14 Ashes series.
Australia might not be playing with the strongest XI in the opening game of the test series versus India.
Many of the players who regularly feature for the Kangaroos in test cricket are devastated by the recent Phillip Hughes’ tragedy and the Australian Cricket Board totally understands their situation.
The board chief, Mr. James Sutherland, clearly said while talking to the press yesterday that it’s not mandatory for every player to feature in the first game.
Stuart Broad’s injury has given Harry Gurney another opportunity to prove that he is World Cup material.
The Southpaw paceman would probably not have found himself in the touring party to Sri Lanka if Broad had not been sitting out recovering from his operation.
Broad and Anderson are two certainties in the England bowling line up in the World Cup. The third will certainly be a spinner, whether it’s James Tredwell or Moeen Ali and the fifth will be an all rounder.
The captain of the Australian Cricket Team, Michael Clarke, has admitted that not including the middle order batsman Steven Smith in the playing XI was a wrong decision in yesterday’s match against Zimbabwe.
Australia, shockingly, lost that match to Zimbabwe by 3 wickets. It was their first defeat against the African nation in more than three decades.
Adam Gilchrist reckons that Alastair Cook, the English captain, should meet Shane Warne and try to sort out his differences with the leg spinner.
Warne has been Cook’s biggest critic in the last 12 months. He clearly says that the Essex left hander is not good enough to be leading the English side.
Warne has an issue with Cook’s negative approach on the field. According to him, the England captain keeps looking for a safer route and that’s why, the Three Lions don’t manage to win matches.
The fast bowler of the Australian Cricket Team, James Pattinson, has said that he made his debut in test match cricket a bit earlier than when he should have and that’s why he has got repeatedly injured in his test career so far.
Pattinson has been one of the most injury prone Aussie fast bowlers in the last couple of years. He has hardly played consecutive test matches in the recent past.
He had injured his back while playing in the Ashes series in England last year which kept him out of the home Ashes.