Ahh winter, the time of year dreaded by so many, bringing short days, cold nights and those dreary mornings where all you want to do is quit work and set up life somewhere in bed. For Australian sports fans however, it’s the time of year when all the sporting stars seem to align.
See, winter in Australia is summer in the northern hemisphere, which means their competitions finish playing their outrageously long seasons and commence a few final games which determine legacies.
This year brought around an NBA Finals that should have been virtually a non-event, even with the much admired or hated LeBron James playing.
What we got however, was a classic David versus Goliath battle where David was played by the aforementioned polarising superstar.
Even if the record books read of a seemingly comfortable 4-2 win, those who followed will remember a series where a champion team only just beat a champion and his bench.
Stephen Curry caught fire, bombing threes from anywhere he chose, and the ‘Delly’ story had America wanting to get to know the boy from country Victoria. Once again though, LeBron stole the show. Even a week after the final game in Cleveland, long after all the champagne and tinsel had been cleaned off the streets of Oakland, it’s LeBron they’re still talking about.
Now to the English summer, one that started where if left off in Australia. Embarrassed by an under-strength, already weak West Indies side, England came home to the papers demanding Alastair Cook’s departure and the inclusion of Kevin Pietersen.
Yet after a hard-fought teaser of a Test series and an ODI series full of huge run chases and battered bowlers, everything seems to be rosy again in English cricket.
Is this English team really on the rise? Will Trevor Bayliss really have a positive attacking impact on a Test team led by one of the most boring captains in a game where run rates are climbing ever more rapidly? Which one of the four ‘certain starters’ of a pace quartet will be left out by the Australian selectors? Will the newly crowned number one batsman in Test cricket continue his dominance?
This Ashes series promises to be as keenly contested as the battles which have been played out against New Zealand – even if they aren’t played in the same spirit for which the Kiwi cricket team has come to be known.
A long, drawn-out sporting series always seems to throw up a ‘Delly’; someone who rises from nowhere and has a huge impact on how the games are played out. With David Warner this time wanting to take a subdued approach to an English summer, maybe he will plunder the English attack? Or will it be one of the two spinners that look to be outshone by Australia’s most prolific off spinner?
Either way it promises to be a fiery winter that will nudge up the temperature a degree or two for the keen Aussie cricket fan.
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