Winners and Losers

South Africa win, Australia lose. Albie does shit all to help the saffas in their win. Instead, AB's the man of the night (or Kallis, if we're looking at who won MoM) with his 80 off 87 balls, and Jacques' 70 off 86 balls. Mark Boucher was similarly good towards the end of the innings, whereas Albie just never seemed to settle in during his 29 run stand.

Hit it harder, goddammit. But don't get out either.

The pitch was murderously slow, and I almost fell asleep during the SA innings. The curator had made it so in order to limit movement later at night. If the IPL's kicking off here very soon, I'd hate to see the same sort of pitch in play. It would be tedious, even for a T20.

ROFL did an excellent job, coming in the last over and scoring a quick 6. He also took 3/37, picking up Clarke, Mike Hussey and Ferguson. On the subject of Hussey, the poor man was out lbw for 1. He's had a terrible time of it, but this seemed to be fate intervening, with the lbw call being clearly wrong. He'd inside edged the ball, but apparently nature was having none of it and natural order prevailed. Mike went back to the dressing room. Things are looking grey for him.

How good was the Echidna, however? 63 off 68 balls, a career best in ODIs, matched only by James Hopes' 63 off 60 balls. Ferguson is really carving himself a place in this side. That's two matches where he's been the first Aussie to step up and put up a real fight.

"Soon, my precioussss, I will take Mike Hussey's place in the side."

On the SA side, when the batting powerplay was called, Duminy cracked into the ball, hitting a six and a four on consecutive balls. Albie was promoted 2 places up the order specially for the powerplay, but eventually swung clumsily at a ball from Johnson, to be bowled. He had a semi-revenge later that night, however, when he bowled the ball on which Johnson was run out. Not amazing, seeing as Duminy was the one who did the real work, but it's something. Success by association. In the end, Albie was the most expensive SA bowler, going for 6.60 runs an over. Not pretty when you compare it to Roelof's economy rate of 3.70, and the 3 wickets alongside it. In any case, it's not as though Albie's going to be dropped from the squad. Not like Morne (Albie is still gloating).

What else? I'm happy to write this about Johnson, seeing as he bowled well but didn't bat at all that well, but he picked up 4 wickets for 34. Impressive. Bowling, that is.

After this all, Ponting is thankfully thinking up excuses to keep Brett Geeves out of the team. Apparently Geeves "has a sore foot at the moment. [They] don't know the extent of it yet but he's hobbling around quite a bit in the change rooms."

Anything to keep him out of the side, hey, Ricky?