titan_uranus

6/199 at stumps. McGain getting rid of both Hartley and Broad. Good on him. Close match this.

4/121 at tea. Hartley and Broad dropping the anchor. Suits us I guess. The longer it takes them to make their runs, the better our chance is of not losing. Wade is a good cricketer. Very good, in fact. But interestingly, and showing the depth of Australian cricket, he would have to be 3rd, maybe even 4th, in the pecking order. Haddin leads, and deservedly so. After Haddin, Tim Paine, Chris Hartley and Graham Manou are all in contention. Paine would be the choice for ODI/T20 cricket, whilst I reckon Hartley should be the next Test keeper (don't know how old he is though). Manou is better than the others with the gloves, but doesn't hold a candle to any of them with the bat. But he has credits, having filled in for Haddin in England and India. Wade probably thus falls into line behind each of these guys. Yet maybe in any other country he'd be the deputy*. *Except West Indies, Pakistan and Bangladesh, where he'd be in the team already.

This is true. NZ, in NZ, where the pitches are likely to be spin-friendly to accommodate Vettori and possibly Patel, make for an easy debut. Harwood, Siddle and Nannes are the ones out. Good bowlers, all of them, but Hastings and Wright have been exceptional. Wright especially. He missed out on being Shield player of the year by 1 vote, and he only played half a season. And with White back in the team, our batting line-up is as strong as it can be, with Hodge retiring.

Word on the street is that Smith is in line to take North's spot for the first Test. I'm not entirely sold on this. Whilst I think North should make way, I don't think Smith's ready. Of course, the person who should be playing, White, is in the wrong country (but has an important job to do nonetheless). As for the Shield, we just need someone in the top 6 to stand up and make a big score for us to be safe. With a top 6 of Rogers, Jewell, Finch, Hussey, White and McDonald, we should be able to make enough runs to at least hold out for a draw. Queensland's strength is undoubtedly their bowling, but away from the Gabba where the pitch does half the work we should be OK.

Here we go again. Western Australia needs 106 for victory. And they're 2/1 afer 7 balls. Here come Queensland. Edit: Now 3/1, with North making a golden duck. Very, very lucky to be going to NZ. WA's top 3 have made 1, golden duck, and golden duck. Edit 2: Now 5/27. Still need 79 runs for victory. Queensland could well win this. Hopefully it won't matter, as Victoria leads Tasmania by 160 runs on first innings, and Tassie are currently 2/3. Wade made 50, but our tail didn't kick on like it can. Shouldn't matter, though. Edit 3: But Tasmania are 5/18. Wright has 9 for the match. Game over.

In great news for Victoria, Queensland have been bowled out for 106 in reply to Western Australia's 286, and WA have enforced the follow on. Hopefully Queensland can't come back from this one, and if they don't then we'll host the final regardless of what happens in our match vs Tasmania.

Disappointing for Cameron White I reckon. Beaten to the squad by Steven Smith, as well as North who holds his place. Likely starting team: Watson Katich Ponting Hussey Clarke North Haddin Johnson Hauritz McKay Bollinger Same team we played in Perth. I can't see Smith taking North's spot (though it wouldn't be such a bad thing), and there would be doubts about Hughes batting at 6.

I agree too. Clarke is employed by Cricket Australia to play cricket. How many other employers would allow you to quit for an indefinite time because your idiot girlfriend can't control her own life? He shouldn't have left NZ. We have phones and the internet now.

With Clarke returning home, and thus uncertain to be a part of the Test squad, Marcus North's chances of going to NZ are probably strengthened. But I like Peter Roebuck's squad, which has Steven Smith and Cameron White in place of North: Watson, Katich, Ponting, Clarke, Hussey, Smith, White, Haddin, Hauritz, Johnson, Bollinger, Cutting, McKay. With Copeland on standby I'd be starting with the same XI from the Australian summer, but switching North for White and Siddle for McKay. If Clarke is unavailable North will keep his spot.

Not exactly sure how my post was 'carp'. When you lose your 5th wicket, and you lead by just 50 runs, that's not a good position to be in. Considering our last two innings have been for scores of 199 and 104, things weren't looking good. Wade and Wright obviously fixed things for us, and brilliant they were. To get to 378 after being 5/111 was a sterling effort. Pity neither got to 100 though.

We're in massive trouble now. 5/133, a lead of only 58 runs. Losing Hussey to the third ball of the day hurt. Losing Jewell and McDonald as well has basically killed us. We desperately need Quiney, Wade and Hastings (very much an improved all rounder who may find himself playing for Australia soon) to get our lead to 200. Hopefully our bowlers can make some inroads, because we need the 6 points from this match.

And here we were thinking that the West Indies were on the path to improvement... They've just been beaten by Zimbabwe. Yes, Zimbabwe. A team that plays the majority of its cricket against Bangladesh. Not to mention having no functioning home, and very few international-quality players. And the Windies had Benn, Chanderpaul and Gayle back in their team. Hopefully in the Test arena they remain competitive, but their recent ODI and T20 matches have been abysmal.

What a T20! First there was McCullum's 116*, second highest score ever and only the second century in T20s. Some of those 'Dilscoops' he played were phenomenal, some came of Tait bowling at 155km/h! Then we had White hit 64* off just 26, as we chased down 214. And then we had Southee bowl yorker after yorker, first in the regular game, then in the super-over.

Points Table: Victoria 8 4 1 0 3 0 30 Queensland 8 4 1 0 3 0 26 Tasmania 8 2 2 0 4 0 17 South Australia 8 2 3 0 3 0 16 New South Wales 8 2 3 0 3 0 14 1 Western Australia 8 1 5 0 2 0 12 So whilst we're already guaranteed to make the final (Tasmania can only get 12 points max from their last 2 games), we could well end up second, and thus playing the final in Brisbane. Last 2 games are vs Western Australia at the WACA and Tasmania at the MCG. We're going to be down on numbers for both matches, but you'd still back us in to win both. Edit: This is our first loss in a 4-day game since the 3-6 March 2008 vs Western Australia.

Sorry to ruin it for you 45. You following on Cricinfo? For some reason they don't do Shield matches, so they take scores off cricket.com.au

Unbelievable stuff from Tendulkar. The man knows no limits. Queensland 9/209. Hartley's out, but we've only got 42 runs to play with, so we need to wrap this up quickly. This Swan guy seems to be pretty capable with the bat. Gotta win this. Edit: Not good. 9/226. 32 run partnership already. Ach, this is going to be close... Edit: Rain delay now! 9/231, this is going to go down to the wire. Edit: This is over now I feel: 9/241 Edit: It's over! 9/252. A 58 10th wicket partnership between their number 10 and 11s gets them the win, our first outright Shield loss in a couple of years, and they close the gap. Bad loss, really. Why McDonald didn't bowl himself I'll never know.

Oh dear God... Victoria, recommencing on 1/4 with a lead of 150, are currently 9/89. Yes, 9 down. At one stage it was 7/33. To think that if we'd bowled Queensland out for just 4 runs less we could (and probably would) have enforced the follow on. This is such an important match, and we may have blown it. The lead is currently 235. 70 short of what we need, but some disciplined bowling should hopefully give us a chance. A massive 10th wicket partnership would help.

Only player worthy of getting dropped at the moment is North. So unless either Hughes is willing to bat at 6, or the selectors wish to risk a lot by splitting the highly successful opening pair of Katich and Watson, Hughes isn't getting back in any time soon.

Bad start for Victoria with Hopes getting Rogers and Mash out early, but Jewell and Finch are rebuilding. 2/115 South Africa's team seems unbalanced. Not enough batsmen. Like Duminy, Albie Morkel's not playing anywhere near as well as he did against us.

Argh! Hashim Amla bats for almost 500 minutes for his 3rd consecutive century, and Morne Morkel at 11 bats for 22.4 overs, only for Harbhajan Singh to take his 5th wicket with 9 balls remaining to win the Test and retain India's No. 1 ranking. Frustrating! Meanwhile, decent off-spinners have shown that JP Duminy is not the indestructible superstar we thought he was when we were playing them. First Graeme Swann, now Harbhajan have shown that a decent off-spinner can make the difference.

It's hard to care about cricket given that, as I type, we're playing our intraclub match, but I saw this on Cricinfo: New Zealand and Sri Lanka are going to play ODIs in Florida. Also, Afghanistan is playing well in the World Twenty20 qualifiers. It'd be pretty cool if they could qualify.

Immensely looking forward to the Ashes. But following the Tests there are 7 ODIs. Too many. Seems to me that CA is either contractually or otherwise bound to have 10 ODIs per season (there are another 3 before the Ashes vs Sri Lanka) or they don't get it. 3 would have been plenty. Warne can get stuffed. We're the Bushrangers. Show some respect to your heritage I say.

No way the triangular series is coming back. It was scrapped because of the boring and unattended neutral matches every week. I mean, who wants West Indies v Pakistan in Hobart? We can't play England, South Africa and India exclusively. Every so often we play lesser teams, like these two, and this is what happens. But one day the Windies will be strong again, and maybe it will be England who will attract complaints. Who knows. Meanwhile, I'm loving the India-South Africa Test in Nagpur. India have been forced to follow on after Dale Steyn ripped through their batting order, taking 7. And in the follow on they've already lost Gambhir and Sehwag. Hopefully the Proteas have enough in the tank to get Tendulkar out early, and the match will be theirs.

I reckon Sunday games generally draw lower crowds than Fridays, for starters. So let's compare ODIs with ODIs, and wait until the Friday ODI vs the West Indies next week. I'm tipping the crowd will be higher on the Friday. Although, there's a NAB cup game between Collingwood and St Kilda that day at Etihad. That could impact on the crowd. But having and ODI 2 days after a T20, when the T20 leads into a weekend and the ODI leads into a work/school day, clearly the T20 is going to rate higher. Was a good game to be at, though. Except for the damn cold wind.

Don't like the news of Siddle's stress fractures. Not good. However, it opens the door for the likes of Clint McKay and Ryan Harris to get on the plane to NZ and play Test cricket. It also gives Brett Lee some hope, if he's fit for the tour of England. But by then I think Hilfenhaus will be fit again, and he'll come in straight away.