Women’s Big Bash League match review: Sydney Sixers v. Sydney Thunder at Sydney

Needing to continue their six-match winning streak to cement a finals birth, the Sydney Sixers sent themselves into bat. Alyssa Healy came out firing, with three fours off the first over, while her opening partner, the ‘It’ girl of Australian sport Ellyse Perry, floundered with a sextet of dot balls off Lauren Cheatle’s first over.

Perry was sent packing in the fourth over, having scored one run from fourteen balls, and having been bowled down middle and leg by Nicola Carey. But Healy continued the slog-a-thon with Ashleigh Gardner, the pair combining for a second-wicket partnership of seventy-six.

The Thunder’s poor fielding was perhaps the Sixers’ greatest asset; Gardner was dropped on thirty-four by Alex Blackwell at mid-off, while Healy was dropped on the boundary rope by Naomi Stalenburg the following over on thirty-five. By the time Rene Farrell was able to dismiss Healy for forty-four with a successful catch at mid-off, the Sixers were 2/95. Gardner then brought up her fifty in style with a six over long-on before skying a shot into the infield and the waiting hands of Blackwell.

Kiwi import Sara McGlashan and South African Marizanne Kapp continued the onslaught, picking off fours with nonchalance. Eventually, Kapp’s impetuous running between the wickets led to her downfall: after surviving one referral to the third umpire, a failure to get back to the non-striker’s end during an aborted second run led to a run out at the hands of Farrell.

The same fate, sealed by the same bowler, awaited the next batter in, Sarah Aley, in the penultimate over. A McGlashan six, as Lisa Sthalekar sans helmet stood in awe at the non-striker’s end, ended the innings, the pink ladies bringing up the highest total of the season, 6/172.

The Sixers’ bowling attack picked up where their batting line-up left off, Kapp setting the tone with a first-over maiden. The feisty right-arm Port Elizabethan brunette snagged three wickets in her first three overs: Rachael Haynes caught in the infield for six, Blackwell l.b.w. for a golden duck, Stafanie Taylor caught for ten. With Stalenburg also stumped for a golden duck off Aley’s bowling, the westies were 4/30 at the end of the powerplay.

With the target of 173 now seemingly impossible to chase down, Carey and Erin Osborne set about doing just that. They put on eighty-one runs, including thirty-three between the twelfth and fourteenth overs. Carey reached her half-century (scored off thirty balls) in the fourteenth over with a well-timed drive down the leg-side, and not even a 120km/h delivery from Perry could unseat the pair.

It took until the sixteenth over for the hosts to get the breakthrough they desired, when Sthalekar’s off-spin bedazzled a reverse-sweeping Carey, leaving the Thunder 5/106. Wicketkeeper Claire Koski entered the fray and hit a quick-fire ten off five balls before getting herself caught behind. Osborne and Farrell kept the runs flowing before the former was caught by the substitute Sara Hungerford.

By the time Kapp bowled Farrell in the nineteenth over, the run chase was well and truly over. Seven wins in as many matches, and fourth place on the road for Perry, Kapp, Sthalekar, and the gang. (Postscript: the Sixers finished the regular season in third place, and will face second seeds the Hobart Hurricanes in the semi-finals.)

Sydney Sixers 6/172 (20 overs) (Ashleigh Gardner 55; Sarah McGlashan 49*; Belinda Vakarewa 1/13; Lauren Cheatle 1/19) – Sydney Thunder 9/151 (20 overs) (Nicola Carey 53; Erin Osborne 36; Marizanne Kapp 4/18; Lisa Sthalekar 3/34)

Women’s Big Bash League match review: Melbourne Renegades v. Sydney Thunder at Melbourne (Docklands)

Another Saturday, another televised afternoon of the best thing since sliced bread women’s T20 cricket. The bottom-of-the-table Melbourne Renegades put themselves into bat against league leaders the Sydney Thunder at the open-roofed Docklands Stadium.

Needing to come out firing, Kiwi wicketkeeper Rachel Priest and South African batter Dane van Niekerk combined for a mammoth opening partnership of sixty-eight. They hit over the top during the powerplay, assisted by the pacy outfield, with van Niekerk hitting left-arm pacewoman Lauren Cheatle for a six (the only one of the match) in the fourth over, then a pair of fours two overs later.

Priest survived a stumping appeal which was sent upstairs, before her opening partner lofted a short ball to mid-wicket on twenty-nine. Danni Wyatt was the next batter in, and copped another knock to her body while stationed at the non-striker’s end before spinner Maisy Gibson clipped the top of her bails with a leg break.

Having made 5/86 in last week’s MCG derby, the Renegades took 12.2 overs to get to 2/86 this week, and Priest brought up her fifty with little fanfare in the fifteenth over. Captain Sarah Elliott made a quick-fire eighteen before being stumped; Kris Britt followed her into the pavilion the following over after being caught at cover.

Priest went off the first ball of the penultimate over, caught by Gibson at square leg for fifty-seven from fifty-five balls, twenty of those runs coming from fours. A late-innings collapse saw one Renegades’ batter run out and two more caught lofting the ball high into the infield. The power hitting of Priest, van Niekerk, and Elliott, who hit eleven fours and a six between them, had ensured that the hosts would set their opponents a target of 140.

Unable to find their rhythm, the Thunder’s batting line-up wilted under the hot Melbourne sun. The Docklanders opened the bowling with off-spinner Molly Strano, who dismissed both opening batters in the third over: Rachael Haynes bowled for three and Jamaican import Stafanie Taylor l.b.w. for seven, leaving the sirens from the Siren City reeling at 2/13.

Naomi Stalenburg was out shortly afterwards, skying a ball to short third (wo)man. The Thunder were 3/27 at the end of the powerplay, but corvopolitan captain Alex Blackwell and partner Nicola Carey steadied the ship. Carey fell to a Sophie Molineux l.b.w. in the ninth over, Claire Koski and Charlotte Anneveld also coming and going in quick succession. Blackwell then combined with tail-ender Rene Farrell, executing a wide array of power hits, ramp shots, and switch hits.

The Sydneysiders kept going, but failed to make the target chaseable going into the final overs. Molineux and Strano dismissed Farrell and two more tail-enders, before Blackwell ended her captain’s knock of forty-five when she was caught and bowled by her opposite number Elliott.

Winning by thirty-six runs, the Renegades belied their status as the league’s cellar-dwellers, putting on a fine exhibition of cricket. This blog particularly enjoyed the contribution of the petite Pretorian van Niekerk: a superb innings at a strike rate of 120.83, the only six of the match, and some fine work in the field, including a spectacular last-over dive at deep square leg to deny Blackwell a six of her own.

Melbourne Renegades 8/139 (20 overs) (Rachel Priest 57; Dane van Niekerk 29; Belinda Vakarewa 2/13; Nicola Carey 2/23) – Sydney Thunder 103 (19.4 overs) (Alex Blackwell 45; Rene Farrell 18; Sophie Molineux 3/18; Molly Strano 3/20)

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Big Bash League

The bourgeois liberal economist John Maynard Keynes once challenged an adversary: “when the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?” This blog has also changed its mind: about T20 cricket.

Test cricket is a batsman’s game. That sounds counter-intuitive, given the common refrain from the purists than modern limited-overs cricket is based around an uneven contest between bat and ball. Sure, there are fewer sixes hit and run rates are lower in the five-day game, but that misses the point: the primary aim of test batting is not to lose one’s wicket.

Given that nearly one-third of tests end in draws, I would say that batsmen are doing just fine defending their wicket. Because cricket lacks any equivalent of baseball’s strikeout, and because bowlers need to deliver something like the Gatting Ball to dismiss a batsman bent on protecting his wicket, the wielders of the willow can stay at the crease forever, only getting out when they start trying to score runs.

If one were to design the ideal form of cricket, what ingredients would one put in it?

First, I would force batsmen to play at most deliveries, not just block or leave the good balls and hit the bad ones. T20 brings urgency to cricket, leaving batsman no time to ‘get their eye in’ and forcing them to play at most balls.

Second, I would want innovative, often unorthodox, 360-degree strokeplay. The ‘Dilscoop’, although first used by Learie Constantine for the West Indies against the M.C.C. at Lord’s in 1933, is a common sight in T20 matches. As is the ramp, the reverse sweep, Kevin Pietersen’s ‘switch hit’, and impromptu tennis shots. Test cricket, hidebound by the customs of Victorian England which problematised leg-side play and haunted by the spectre of Bodyline (‘fast leg theory’), fails to deliver this variety of strokeplay for the spectator.

Third, I would like to see the strategic use of singles to rotate the strike, assisted by fast running between the wickets: the cricketing equivalent of baseball’s ‘small ball’ tactics. Test cricket, defined by the lack any urgency to score runs on the part of the batting team, lacks this element, which also renders athleticism less important.

Fourth, I would like to see a wider range of deliveries used by fast bowlers. This Cricinfo article details the fascinating evolution of the slower ball, first used by Australian pacemen in county cricket in the 1990s during the death of a one-day innings, now a staple of T20 fast bowling. Such balls are pointless in tests, where batsmen are generally in no hurry to play shots and will just block or leave anything they don’t like the look of.

Fifth, having grown up idolising Shane Warne while hearing the doomsayers claim that spin bowling would die a natural death in limited-overs cricket, I would be excited to see spin bowlers dominating the bowling averages. Spinners have not just been the best-performing bowlers in the Big Bash League, but are often used strategically as opening bowlers, something unthinkable in tests, where they are used mainly to exploit the old ball or a friendly pitch.

Sixth, I would wish to see bowlers under the same pressures as batsmen. With (at most) twenty-four legal deliveries, bowlers are looking not just to get wickets (as in tests) or keep down the run rate (as in one-dayers), but to create dot balls and take wickets to slow the batting side’s momentum. Slower balls and yorkers are mixed in with stock balls to create a varied package of deliveries; in tests, the ball is in the batsman’s court, so the attacking skills of bowlers are emphasised at the expense of defensive containment.

Seventh, I would like to see good fielding. The fielding in the BBL is not just good, it is phenomenal. We’re all Jonty Rhodeses now. Test fielding, typified by large gatherings in the slips cordon and vacant outfields, lacks the spectacular boundary-rope catches and four-preventing slides that are the bread and butter of T20.

Eighth, I would want to see efficient field placings. Test cricket’s slips-heavy fields allow shots which beat the infielders to race away to the boundary for four; one-day cricket was (until the I.C.C. changed the playing conditions in mid-2015) hampered by the requirement that two fieldsmen be placed in catching positions, leaving the fielding team with five infielders and two outfielders with which to staunch the powerplay onslaught. T20 fields allow the defence to kill the powerplay with a ring of seven infielders, six infielders and a ‘shortstop’, or whatever else they fancy.

After watching so many BBL matches this summer, I feel that cricket is selling itself short by promoting T20 as the hit-and-giggle form of the sport, a ‘gateway drug’ to what the purists define as the ‘real thing’. This is the real thing: in contrast to T20, test cricket lacks the urgency, the unorthodox strokeplay, the variation in slower balls, the consecutive yorkers, the strategic deployment of spinners, the drama of a dot ball at a crucial moment, and the ‘small ball’ of fielding, strategic single-hitting, and running between the wickets.

The purists’ case for test cricket as the supreme form of the game rests on the valorisation of skill over speed, power, and athleticism. But sport is about more than mere skill: the various football codes as well as other spectator sports such as basketball and ice hockey understand this. Test cricket remains a platform for great individual achievements – centuries, double-centuries, five-wicket hauls – but too easily turns into a damp squib when two mismatched teams face off on an unsuitable pitch.

T20 simply provides a better platform for a contest between two teams’ batting and bowling/fielding line-ups. The Australian sporting public understand this, and are voting with their feet (and their remote controls).

Women’s Big Bash League match review: Melbourne Stars v. Melbourne Renegades at Melbourne

Winning the toss, captain Meg Lanning sent her Melbourne Stars in to bat. After having set the women’s circuit alight with seven best-on-grounds in seven matches, she proceeded to be dismissed for two, edging a defensive shot to wicketkeeper Erica Kershaw.

Without their talismanic captain, the Stars’ top order collapsed in a heap. Natalie Sciver and Emma Inglis were bowled in consecutive balls by South African pacewoman Shabnim Ismail, while Lanning’s opening partner Katie Mack was caught l.b.w. playing across the line. All of a sudden, the hosts were 4 for 8.

Needing to steady the ship, Mignon du Preez and Kelly Applebee accumulated singles, constantly rotating the strike. The green machine were 4 for 15 at the end of the powerplay, and du Preez broke through for the first boundary of the afternoon in the eleventh over. The breakthrough for the Renegades’ attack came in the next, when Applebee was caught behind off the bowling of Dane van Niekerk, ending a solid thirty-five-run partnership.

New Zealander Hayley Jensen came in and was soon picked off by a Molly Strano caught-and-bowled; it was the third of the off-spinner’s five wickets. Du Preez built another partnership with Tasmanian tailender Kristen Beams; the Northern Transvaal right-hander survived a stumping appeal in the fifteenth over before being caught at mid-wicket in the nineteenth. Beams and Gemma Triscari would fall to Strano in the final over, the Stars finishing on 9 for 85.

Emma Kearney opened the Stars’ bowling with Triscari. The latter bowled a maiden in the second over, and runs were hard to come by until van Niekerk began hitting over the top in the fourth. The South African was stumped in the next over, her replacement Kris Britt combining well with opening partner Sophie Molineux.

Eighteen runs later, Britt was herself stumped on the final ball of the tenth over, leaving the Renegades 2 for 31. Staffordshire all-rounder Danni Wyatt was the next batter in, and lifted her side with her aggressive running between the wickets and her toughness in shaking off a knock to the back of the head occasioned by one of Molineux’s straight drives.

The pair began ticking off the runs, with singles, twos, and fours; the Docklanders would hit five fours to the Jolimonters’ three. At the top of the sixteenth over, Molineux was run out dashing back to the non-striker’s end, ending a fine innings of thirty from forty-six deliveries.

Renegades’ captain Sarah Elliott would be the next batter run out failing to keep up with Wyatt, her wicket bringing the pocket rocket Ismail to the crease. The required run rate trended downwards: 24 from 24, 12 from 12, five from six. Ismail was defeated in the last over by a fabulous Triscari throw from point; the score at this juncture was 5 for 83. But a wide and two more singles was all the Renegades needed, Wyatt finishing on an unbeaten twenty-three.

This was the sort of match that demonstrated what T20 cricket can be: intelligent, tactical, and highlighted by good fielding and running between wickets. With eight fours and no sixes (due in part to the M.C.G.’s expansive dimensions), this was small ball cricket, cricket as it should be.

Melbourne Stars 9/85 (20 overs) (Mignon du Preez 36; Kristen Beams 14; Molly Strano 5/15; Shabnim Ismail 3/10) – Melbourne Renegades 5/86 (19.5 overs) (Sophie Molineux 30; Danni Wyatt 23*; Natalie Sciver 1/7; Kristen Beams 1/19)

2015 International Rules test review: Ireland v. Australia at Dublin

It was with some excitement that I looked forward to this year’s International Rules test between the AFL’s finest and the Emerald Isle’s top Gaelic footballers, held at the iconic Croke Park. With 2015 being an annus horribilis for the indigenous code, both on the field (73 stoppages per match) and off it (Goodesgate, Essendongate, Phil Walsh’s murder), perhaps the hybrid game could light the way to a better brand of football.

International Rules is much maligned by AFL fans: the Irish are seen as lacking in physicality and athleticism compared to our players, and the contest is viewed as a junket. But the hybrid code actually retains many features of pre-Demetriou Australian rules. There are few ball-ups, no rolling mauls, limited interchange, and teams are forced to kick to contests due to the ban on chains of six or more handballs. While it is admittedly a less physical game, it is more physical than Gaelic football and it favours the small forward over the clearance specialist midfielder.

The result is a code which moves at the steady, constant tempo of a soccer match and which features the round-ball skills of the world game, in addition to the physicality and aeriality of Australian rules. In other words, it combines some of the best features of this blog’s two favourite sports! No wonder I’m so excited about it.

Although Australia were the first to score, courtesy of a Robbie Gray over within the first minute, the match was less than four minutes old when a goal-mouth scramble caused by the first of many goalkeeping errors from Dustin Fletcher led to Aidan O’Shea goaling. The sides traded overs in a solid display of accurate kicking until the score reached 21-12 in Ireland’s favour; the only behind of the first quarter came in the final minute of the term, when Irish goalkeeper Niall Morgan deflected Jarryd Roughead’s shot through for a behind.

At the start of the second quarter, an over and a behind for the visitors, clad in navy blue shirts with yellow trims and a yellow Southern Cross, brought the score to 21-17. But it wasn’t long before O’Shea bagged his second goal of the match, Ireland getting a second bite of the cherry after Fletcher saved Bernard Brogan’s initial shot.

More skilful ball movement by the Irish, sporting lightly hooped shirts in two shades of green and embellished with white and yellow trims, took the score to 34-22 by the twelfth minute of the quarter thanks to two Brogan overs. It was then that Australian captain Luke Hodge brought back memories of his Round 21 bump which put Chad Wingard’s head between himself and a behind post, when he bundled Donegal man Patrick McBrearty into the goalpost after yet another Fletcher mistake. Conor McManus made no mistake from the spot, and the men in green led by eighteen points having scored three goals.

Ireland led 43-23 at the main break: Australia’s shining lights were Sam Mitchell in the midfield and their fleet of small forwards led by Eddie Betts, who menaced the Irish defence with their ground-ball skills. Statistically, however, the two teams were evenly matched, with similar numbers of marks and tackles and roughly even time in possession, though the tactical contrast between them could be seen in the handballs: just before half-time, Australia hit the century mark while Ireland, where purists have complained of late of the increasing handball-to-kick ratio in Gaelic football, had executed only thirty-eight.

Australia began the third quarter well with Leigh Montagna and David Mundy kicking overs early on. The match never lost its free-flowing tempo, and when Nick Riewoldt was tackled inside the penalty area in the fourth minute of the second half, we had played forty minutes of football (!) and had just witnessed the first stoppage.

Two further Irish overs blew the score out to 50-29, but one over from Luke Breust, two from Riewoldt, and Fletcher’s decision to come out of his box and act as a ‘sweeper-keeper’ got los australianos back into the contest. The hosts led 50-39 at the final change, but the ascendancy was with the Aussies, whose superior fitness often proves the difference late in these matches.

A fierce opening to the fourth quarter saw neither side score for nearly six minutes as both relentlessly attacked and counter-attacked. An Irish behind relieved the tension, while their solid defending denied Riewoldt at the other end. Betts added one point and Gray three, but Ireland came close to sealing the match when what would have been McManus’ second goal bounced off the top side of the crossbar.

Australia needed something special, and it came one minute later. West Coast’s Andrew Gaff crossed and Betts flew over a bi-national group of players to punch the ball in for a goal. A score review was needed to check whether the Crows’ goalsneak had fallen foul of the ‘square ball’ rule (Gaelic football’s equivalent of an offside law, which bars attackers from entering the six-yard box before the ball has done so), but the ‘all clear’ was given, and Australia were within six points. Another cross from Gaff resulted in an over to Gray, and the margin was down to three (55-52) with as many minutes remaining.

Having already scored four overs, Brogan looked to have the match won for Ireland when he went one-on-one with Fletcher in the dying minutes. But the retiring Essendon veteran effected a superb tackle, forcing play back to the twenty-metre line for what was only the second ball-up of the match. Australia looked to take the ball out from the back, but Ireland regained possession and strung together a chain of marks – not a feature of their code – to run down the clock. It was Brogan who put the result beyond doubt when the Dublin forward scored a behind with thirty-two seconds remaining.

It was a splendid encounter on a chilly Dublin night, and the Irish were deserved winners of the Cormac McAnallen Cup. Geelong defender Harry Taylor was awarded the Jim Stynes Medal as Australia’s best on ground, though the other Cat in the side, stoppage king Paddy Dangerfield was ineffective in the largely stoppage-free hybrid code.

Last year, when Australia handily defeated Ireland in Perth, I was unimpressed by the match. Specifically, I felt that the near-amateur Irish exerted a lack of defensive pressure on their better-conditioned opponents. This time around, however, the match was a much better spectacle. The hosts, playing in a more accommodating climate than Perth in November, and having selected players suited to the hybrid code rather than following the Australian policy of handing out lifetime achievement guernseys to past all-Australians, were able to swarm the Australian ball-carrier and punish the antipodeans’ lack of polish with the round ball.

I also cannot stress enough the most important statistic of the night: two stoppages. That’s not a misprint: AFL matches this year averaged 73, and that number is on an upward trend due to the speeding-up of the game and the interchange cap. With the round ball and the prohibitions against taking possession while being on one’s knees and diving on the ball, International Rules is a breath of fresh air when set against the stoppage-infested ‘third rugby code’ that footy has turned into in the Demetriou-McLachlan Era.

And it wasn’t just the lack of stoppages that impressed me in this match: with their natural feel for the round ball, the Irish were able to keep the ball in perpetual motion, tapping it backwards over their heads to teammates and diving to knock it to advantage.

For the AFL and the Gaelic Athletic Association, International Rules is just a hybrid sport which facilitates international competition between the two organisations. But this is a fantastic sport in its own right, and one which deserves to be played at the highest level more than once per year.

For years, there have been calls for the inclusion of the New York and London Gaelic football teams, both of whom participate in the all-Ireland championship, to turn the International Rules Series into a triangular or quadrangular tournament. A more radical idea would be to incorporate elements of soccer, one example being place-kicked free kicks, which were historically a feature of Gaelic football. If players from the lower reaches of professional soccer could be encouraged to take up the hybrid code, we could have an International Rules World Cup.

A more realistic goal would be to incorporate some aspects of International Rules into Australian football: specifically the prohibition of taking possession while on one’s knees and the rule against stringing together more than six handpasses. The first should reduce this blog’s bête noire, congestion, by stopping players from diving on loose balls that they have no hope of handballing to advantage. The second would be aimed at bringing back the long kick to a contest, historically one of football’s key aesthetic features, and this should help with congestion by drawing players back into their forward and back lines and away from the 36-man midfield scrimmage.

Ireland 3.11.5.56 – Australia 1.13.7.52

Goals: O’Shea 4’ (Q1), 3’ (Q2); McManus 12’ (Q2, pen.) (Ire.); Betts 13’ (Q4) (Aust.)

Overs: Brogan 4, McManus 3, Connolly, Hughes, Keegan, O’Shea (Ire.); Gray 3, Betts 2, Riewoldt 2, Ballantyne, Breust, Heppell, Montagna, Mundy, Roughead (Aust.)

Best: O’Shea, Brogan, McManus, Keegan (Ire.); Taylor, Mitchell, Breust, Heppell, Betts, Riewoldt (Aust.)

2018 World Cup qualifying match review: Bangladesh v. Australia at Dhaka

After beating Bangladesh 5-0 at the Perth Oval earlier in the campaign, the Socceroos could have been excused for taking their collective foot off the pedal in the return fixture at the Bangabandhu National Stadium in Dhaka. Under a security cloud caused by the appearance of ISIS in the once terror-free Subcontinental republic, the visitors notched up another goal difference-boosting win, knocking four goals past their opponents.

Australia, in their now-quotidian gold-trimmed navy blue away kit, attacked from the kick-off, forcing the Bengal Tigers to boot the ball out of their penalty area multiple times in the first three minutes before Tim Cahill headed an Aaron Mooy free kick into goal. The Melbourne City midfielder has had a blinder of an international break, involving himself in all four goals here in addition to his excellent playmaking against Kyrgyzstan.

It was a humid night in Dhaka, and the hosts’ shirts (red with green trim) were visibly moist and clung to their bodies as tightly as the players did to their more illustrious opponents. Bangladesh took nineteen minutes to bother Adam Federici, though they made their presence felt at the other end: they committed four fouls in the first half-hour and goalkeeper Shahidul Alam clashed heads with Mile Jedinak.

Shahidul did well on the twenty-eight minute mark to hold the ball in the field of play after being barged into by Cahill, but within four minutes his side were 2-0 down, the aforementioned Cahill fighting off Shahidul and three rossoverdi defenders in a goal-mouth scramble.

With the ‘Roos having seventy-nine percent of possession in the opening half, more chances would eventually come their way. Massimo Luongo tried a header in the thirty-sixth minute, before Mooy and Cahill combined for the third gialloverdi goal a minute later. The former broke through the Bengali defensive line and put himself one-on-one with the keeper, before laying the ball up to the latter, who made no mistake despite being double-teamed by two defenders.

From the second of two successive free kicks conceded by the ill-disciplined youngster Hemanta Biswas, Jedinak was able to put a name other than ‘Cahill’ on the scoresheet, finishing off Bailey Wright’s headed volley of Mooy’s kick.

Mooy and Luongo were rested at half-time, replaced by Tommy Oar and James Troisi. Not content with their limited opportunities thus far, Bangladesh tried to catch Federici napping by pumping a free kick at him from the half-way line, and frustration got the better of their captain in the eighty-seventh minute when he saw yellow for remonstrating with the referee.

The Socceroos, who had seventeen shots on goal to the Bengal Tigers’ two, played it safe in the second half. The closest they came to scoring was in the seventy-first minute, when Nathan Burns was fouled on the edge of the area but sprayed the resulting shot well over the bar, and nine minutes later, when Jedinak tried a speculative bicycle kick.

Another three points on the board for t’lads and, thanks to our good mates Kyrgyzstan beating Jordan at home for us, we now top the group.

Bangladesh 0 – Australia 4 (Tim Cahill 6’, 32’, 37’; Mile Jedinak 43’)

Cautions: Hemanta Biswas (Bang.) 40’; Monaem Khan Raju (Bang.) 47’; Mamunul Islam (Bang.) 87’

International friendly match review: Spain v. England at Alicante

It’s a pity that soccer internationals of this nature are known as ‘friendlies’ instead of ‘tests’, because this was a supreme test for both sides. For Spain, hosting this match in Alicante instead of Madrid because of concerns that unreconstructed franquistas might boo the Catalan patriot Gerard Piqué, this was their chance to show the world that their failure at the 2014 World Cup was an aberration and that tiki-taka, unlike the Generalissimo, was not dead.

For England, whose ten wins gave them the best record in qualifying for Euro ’16, this was an opportunity to show that they could match it with another superpower in their first real test since their group stage exit in Brazil. They lined up in a 4-4-1-1, with Everton’s Ross Barkley nesting behind lone striker Harry Kane, while their hosts went with a 4-1-3-2, featuring Sergio Busquets as the sole holding midfielder.

The story of the night, however, was England’s inability to control possession: a familiar refrain in the sport’s homeland. Most of the decent chances fell to Spain, who ended the first half with sixty-three percent of the ball and who often looked like they were playing futsal with themselves on the tablecloth-patterned turf.

England’s first penetration of the Spanish defence came in the seventh minute, and Raheem Sterling fired the resulting shot well over the bar. La furia roja came close in the twenty-third minute, when Busquets got on the end of a corner kick, and in the twenty-ninth, when Valencia’s Paco Alcácer was the recipient of a high through-ball.

In between all of this, Thiago Alcântara was taken off with an injury, replaced by Santi Cazorla, who proved an effective addition to the Spanish midfield. Sterling put his body on the line in the wall to stop a Cesc Fàbregas free kick in its tracks, but the Three Lions’ defence was almost exposed in injury time, when they were forced to clear the ball from their own penalty area three times in quick succession.

With six shots apiece in the first half, victory looked likely to fall to whichever side could make its chances count. Both coaches tinkered with their bench (six substitutions being allowed in international friendlies by order of Blatter), but it was the entry of Manchester United’s Raumdeuter Juan Mata, on for the so-so Diego Costa just after the hour mark, which altered the game’s complexion.

Suddenly, the Spanish lifted the tempo of their attacking moves, playing through balls and one-twos while pressuring Kane into a series of misses at the other end. In the seventy-second minute, Alcácer, Fàbregas, and Mario Gaspar combined for the opening goal, the last-mentioned executing a superb volley which bounced awkwardly past Joe Hart.

Within a minute, Roy Hodgson dragged the unimpressive Barkley to allow the White Pelé himself, (He Goes By The Name Of) Wayne Rooney, to join Kane in a classically English two-man strike partnership. Vicente del Bosque also rang the changes, swapping Alcácer for Chelsea’s Pedro and Busquets for Atlético Madrid’s Koke. But it was Cazorla who would shatter England’s hopes, firing a loose ball through a confused defence from just outside the box.

There were no further goals, but plenty of further worries for the visitors. Michael Carrick, without doubt the most Spanish Englishman in football, had to be stretchered off in the ninetieth minute with damage to his ankle ligament. In the second minute of second-half stoppage time, Rooney hit the cross-bar with a shot which summed up England’s night.

Overall, this was a match which promised a clash of stereotypes – Spanish tiki-taka against English speed and power – and which largely delivered, but also demonstrated that possession in and of itself is useless without penetration. Spain worked the ball, wore England down, and made them pay in the final twenty minutes. The Poms will need to lift their game if they are to break their half-century major tournament drought in France.

Spain 2 (Mario Gaspar 72’; Santi Cazorla 84’) – England 0