It’s Champions Trophy time – the tournament that has all Australian sporting fans abuzz. Forget your Toyota AFL Premierships, your Holden States of Origin, your Hyundais A-Leagues and other car-sponsored football codes. Let’s all settle in to instead watch some ODIs until three in the morning.
Here are the ratings for Australia’s first match against New Zealand.
Giant Flags
Grade: B-
England had failed to amusingly collapse while chasing 305 against Bangladesh in the first game, putting all the pressure on Australia and New Zealand to provide proper entertainment for the crowds.
The two sides didn’t disappoint, providing an impromptu game of ‘Spot the Difference’ with their giant flags during the national anthems.
The winner? A Mr Chris Lynn from Brisbane, Queensland, who Australia had inexplicably failed to include in their team for the game.
Sorry, I meant to say ‘Lynnexplicably failed to Lynnclude’. I’m a bit out of practice on my Lynnisms.
(Image: Ten Play)
The Bendemeer Bullet
Grade: C+
But it wasn’t just me. Like oxidised iron, or Anthony Michael Hall in ‘National Lampoon’s Vacation’, the Australian bowlers were rusty.
Josh Hazlewood struggled early, no doubt weighed down by the extra pressure brought on when the Cricket Australia Twitter account suddenly and inexplicably dubbed him ‘The Bendemeer Bullet’.
It’s tough to find a nickname with more syllables than ‘Josh Hazlewood’, but Cricket Australia have done it. Well done. I’m very confident it will catch on.
But it wasn’t just The Bendemeer Bullet who struggled early. Mitchell Starc couldn’t find his rhythm either. He went over to check if Pat Cummins had borrowed it, but Cummins pointed to the 52 runs taken from his first five overs as evidence of his rhythm-theft innocence.
Richard Kettleborough’s Eyes
Grade: A
Unlike the Australian bowlers, Richard Kettleborough, international cricket’s leading cyborg umpire, was in tip-top form. He startled fans early when he made a ‘not out’ call from a direct hit run out attempt without referring to the third umpire.
Shane Warne in commentary was particularly impressed with how Kettleborough had imposed himself on the game. A tremendous display of body language and intent was his assessment.
The video replays soon proved Kettleborough correct, of course. Heck, if the footage had disagreed with his decision, you’d be more likely to assume that it had been doctored in some way, perhaps by the SFX wizards at Industrial Light and Magic.
Never question Kettleborough.
Glenn Maxwell’s Hands
Grade: B
Despite the Australian bowlers’ rustiness and Kettleborough’s precision ocular-zing bails upgrade, New Zealand wickets eventually started to fall. Naturally, Glenn Maxwell was involved.
He took the first catch of the innings. Also, the second. Then a third one. And, later, a fourth. Probably more, too, but I’d stopped counting by then.
Great captaincy from Steve Smith. By so blatantly preferring Travis Head’s part-time spin over Maxwell’s, he’s just encouraged the latter’s excess energy to be diverted into plucking balls out of the sky whenever opposition batsman are fool enough to send them anywhere near his general direction.
FUN FACT: No Australian fielder other than Maxwell has taken a catch in an ODI since July last year. And even that was one of those ones where Maxwell leapt over the boundary and parried it back to a team-mate.
Such were the number of catches Maxwell took in this match that you half-expected him to sneakily pull off a stumping next. Just to stick it to Matthew Wade.
Of course, some of the catches he took were trivial. The first, for example, just looped to him off the shoulder of Martin Guptill’s bat. But if you played the catch in reverse, you’d see Maxwell lobbing the ball onto Guptill’s bat, which then deflected into the bowler’s hand.
Mad skillz.
(AP Photo/Jon Super)
Rain
Grade: D
Sadly, before the fun could really take hold, the players headed off for rain. An entire Cricket Legends episode plus a highlights package of the England-Bangladesh game’s worth of time was lost before they returned. But play was initially only reduced by four overs per side, prompting much discussion amongst the Fox Sports panel about how this could be possible.
Brad Haddin mused on the prospect of relativity theory being involved somehow. BJ suggested that perhaps it had something to do with Zeno paradoxes. AB, meanwhile, pondered the irreversibility of entropy and how it defines time’s arrow. “What, in fact, is time?” mused Junior.
Ultimately, none of it mattered. Because while New Zealand returned and made 291 from their overs, powered by a mad rain-delay-fuelled 65 from Luke Ronchi and a typically classy Kane Williamson century, the rain returned during the break.
Australia’s target began to be adjusted. From 292 off 46 initially to 235 off 33 after the rain break. Then, after losing early wickets and another rain delay at 3/53 off 9 overs, the target became 174 off 20 overs, until everybody suddenly realised they wouldn’t be coming back on at all and the whole game was abandoned.
Still, on the plus side, at least the Bendemeer Bullet took 6/52 from 9 overs. Great work, BB.
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