0آسٹریلیا باکسنگ ہوشیار

انگریزی سردیوں میں خوفناک چیز ہے. سرد اور گیلے, اس سیزن کا مطلب ہے کوئی بھی ہوم کرکٹ نہیں.

کرسمس سردی کی دھند میں ایک چمکتی ہوئی روشنی ہے اور اس کو سالانہ ٹیسٹ میچ کی سوچ میں اضافہ کرنے کے لئے جو باکسنگ ڈے سے شروع ہوتا ہے اور عام طور پر نیلے آسمان اور گرم درجہ حرارت کے تحت ہوتا ہے وہ ایک ہے جو تخیل کو متحرک کرتا ہے اور یہ کہ میں اس کو بڑھاؤں گا۔ ٹھنڈا بیئر.

اس کے بعد سے ہر سال باکسنگ ڈے ٹیسٹ لیا جاتا ہے 1980 (سوائے 1989 جب اس کی بجائے ایک روزہ میچ بمقابلہ سری لنکا کھیلا گیا (بو ایڈ) اور آسٹریلیا کے میلبورن کرکٹ کلب میں - MCG عرف). کچھ بڑے ہجوم پر بھی ان کا غلبہ رہا ہے (which have approached six fig­ures on occasion).

So with the weath­er out­side truly fright­ful I’ve taken the oppor­tun­ity to have a look back at a few recent(ish کے) games to see how teams have fared against their Anti­podean hosts.

Sri Lanka were the vis­it­ors last year and were simply blown away. Mitchell John­son was the chief des­troy­er back then (ring any bells), tak­ing four wick­ets and hit­ting an unbeaten 92. Clarke hit a ton in what was an excel­lent year for him and Shane Wat­son and Dav­id Warner hit use­ful half cen­tur­ies. The hosts’ first innings total of 460 was far too much for Sri Lanka to handle, Kumar Sangakkara com­fort­ably top scor­ing across both their innings with 58. Vic­tory to Aus­tralia by an innings and 201 runs.

Bat­ting col­lapses from both teams (India were the vis­it­ors) dom­in­ated the 2011 game. Ed Cow­an on debut opened for the Aus­sies and hit a half cen­tury as did Ricky Pont­ing. For the vis­it­ors the erstwhile trio of Sachin Ten­dulkar, Rahul Dravid and Virender Sehwag (over 450 test matches and more than 37,000 ٹیسٹ ان کے درمیان چلتا ہے) all scored over 50. With hon­ours almost even after the first two innings Australia’s top order col­lapsed but were pulled back from the brink thanks to mean­ing­ful con­tri­bu­tions from Ricky Pont­ing and in par­tic­u­lar Michael Hus­sey. Second innings res­ist­ance by the Indi­ans was futile; James Pattin­son did the major­ity of the dam­age with a four wick­et haul. Com­fort­able vic­tory for Australia.

Eng­land made a far bet­ter fist of things then they are doing presently when they turned up in 2010. They gave the Aus­sies a crick­et­ing les­son, with Jimmy Ander­son and Chris Trem­lett tear­ing though the host’s in their first innings – who were bowled out for less than 100. Eng­land then turned the screws in uncom­prom­ising style, clob­ber­ing them for over 500 with Jonath­an Trott hit­ting a massive cen­tury and Alastair Cook, Andrew Strauss and Matt Pri­or all mak­ing sig­ni­fic­ant con­tri­bu­tions. Aus­tralia fared little bet­ter second time around (Tim Bresnan the chief des­troy­er) and Eng­land ran out vic­tors by an innings and more.

Before that Aus­tralia gave Pakistan a good old-fash­ioned twonk­ing in 2009 with an all-round team effort with all the bats­men scor­ing runs and all the bowl­ers tak­ing wickets.

So that leads me on nicely to this year’s encounter. Per­haps fit­tingly for the 26th Decem­ber, Eng­land suffered yet anoth­er suck­er punch as the vis­it­ors flattered to deceive. Eng­land actu­ally man­aged to fash­ion a handy lead after the first innings but back came the usu­al frailties to haunt them. Some of the bat­ting was simply idi­ot­ic. Ex-open­er and suc­cess­ful Ashes cap­tain Michael Vaughan had some extremely strong words for his former charges. Too right. It’s not been good enough all series – a lot of play­ers have let a lot of people down this series – will this defeat deliv­er the fatal knock out punch to Eng­land – or will they pull them­selves up from the can­vas and deliv­er a belated Christ­mas present to the much suf­fer­ing fans?

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