cricket

It appears the England cricket team loves to give their fans quite the emotional rollercoaster ride. They very nearly subjected us to a 7 – 0 whitewash by the Australian’s, out for revenge; but then go to South Africa and not only beat in-form Sri Lanka, but also knocked-out the hosts in a superb all-round display. However, although their job is done for now, the side went back to their seemingly more traditional style against New Zealand, collapsing whilst batting first and going down by 7 wickets with 25 overs to spare.

It hardly seemed likely that on the eve of the third Ashes Test of the summer I would be writing that Ricky Ponting’s Aussies are well and truly on the back foot after failing to win at Cardiff and being comprehensively beaten at Lord’s by an English side determined to play exhilarating cricket.

It seems only yesterday that Michael Vaughan was lifting that little urn in front of the packed Oval crowd on a gloomy Monday evening in the middle of September; but now, four years on and a lot has changed on the eve of the Ashes 09.

Cricket was invented in England nearly two centuries ago, but, unlike football, rugby and golf, didn’t reach many countries around the world. Afghanistan, a country ravished by war and poverty, have very few national teams, but now their 17-man squad is just seven matches away from reaching the world stage at the ICC Cricket World Cup in South Africa in three years time.

After the hype and commotion surrounding the inaugural Indian Premier League last year, the cricket did not fail to live up to expectations. Over 200 million people watched the tournament in India alone. A year on and the spectacle was all set to be even more exciting, greater sums of money being thrown about and bigger crowds swarming to all the grounds in the sub-continent.

On Saturday night England women’s cricket team managed to do another thing which their male counterparts have failed to achieve by winning the ICC Women’s World Cup in a nail-biting victory over New Zealand at the North Sydney Oval.

After winning the Ashes in 2005, the number of people playing cricket in England rose very quickly and children up and down the country were demanding cricket.

It has been an eventful 10 days in the West Indies, and a week and a half the English camp will want to forget – a demoralising innings and 23 run defeat including a second innings slump of 51 all out; a test match in Antigua which lasted only 10 balls before it was abandoned and moved 50 miles into town; but finally, some good news, as the English top order ran the West Indies fielders ragged on the first day of the 2^nd test, take two.

It's not very often you nearly see history be made, but I , and the millions of Sky Sports 2 viewers almost did on Saturday evening. England's lowest every total in a Test Match is 45, so at 26 - 7 in the 2^nd innings of the first Test in Jamaica records were definitely in jeopardy.