0A yeentanda ngosuku lokugqibela zasehlotyeni

Bendingayilindelanga into enkulu ukusuka kumhla wokugqibela woThuthu. Nge-England basakwii-innings zabo zokuqala, and seem­ingly with no chance of win­ning I expec­ted them to bat out the day. Instead a won­der­ful day of crick­et took place with both sides deserving a huge amount of credit.

Here at Adore­Crick­et we try really hard to remain focused on the pos­it­ives of the game — it is all too easy to get drawn into only writ­ing about the neg­at­ive events of the game. Before I go on with the main thrust of this art­icle though there is an ele­phant in the room that I must address. I’m not going to say too much about it, but the ICC made a ter­rible decision when they changed the rules regard­ing bad light. After the shame­ful end to today’s game the ICC quite simply must cor­rect this mis­take and do so swiftly to avoid fur­ther embarrassment.

Ngoko ke, Masishukume kwi, back to the pos­it­ives. Eng­land deserve huge cred­it for the way they bat­ted this morn­ing — mak­ing nearly 5 runs an over. The Aus­trali­ans also deserve huge cred­it — Michael Clarke in par­tic­u­lar, for the way they bat­ted in their second innings, and their declar­a­tion which gave Eng­land a good chance. Finally, Eng­land deserve some more cred­it for the way they chased the tar­get, and almost cer­tainly would have won.

Zonke yonke loo nto ibe uthotho olukhulu, and Eng­land can take a lot of momentum into the next series in 3 months time. a 3–0 series vic­tory is a fair reflec­tion of the qual­ity of the sides, with Aus­tralia improv­ing as the series went along. Eng­land should be com­fort­able favour­ites for the return series, although prob­ably by a smal­ler margin.