Tag: Cormorants

Stories From the T20 World Cup

A look at developments in the men’s T20 world cup, including a major elimination and a great individual effort by a Canadian.

The first stage of the 2026 men’s T20 world cup is now well advanced. This post looks at a couple of major stories.

ADIOS AUSTRALIA

Australia having already been beaten by Zimbabwe faced Sri Lanka on Monday. When the folks from down under passed the hundred mark in eight overs they looked unstoppable. However Sri Lanka fought back, and as wickets fell Australia’s scoring faltered. In the end Australia managed 181, and were all out just before the end of the 20th over. That total was on the face of it still defensible, but now Pathum Nissanka, well supported by Kusal Mendis and Pavan Rathnayake proceeded to play an absolute blinder of an innings, racking up 100 not out from 52 balls with 10 fours and five sixes. Sri Lanka won by eight wickets with two whole overs to spare, and the mighty Aussies were looking straight at the exit door from the tournament. This was officially confirmed yesterday when the match between Sri Lanka and Zimbabwe was washed out without a ball being bowled. The truth is that after the two defeats they had sustained, both of which were strictly merited Australia would have needed a massive helping of good fortune to qualify and they deserved not to receive such good fortune. I also reckon that a really big name falling at the first hurdle is good news for the tournament.

A GREAT INNINGS

When the first match yesterday, between Canada and New Zealand got under way, no one playing for an associate nation had ever score a century at a T20 world cup. Yuvraj Samra, named in honour of former India international Yuvraj Singh, and like him a left handed batter, scored 110 off 65 balls with 11 fours and six sixes for Canada to become the first such player. Unfortunately for him he did not receive enough support from his team mates – Canada still only managed 173 from their 20 overs, and they then bowled so appallingly that New Zealand reached the target with 4.5 overs and eight wickets to spare.

TODAY SO FAR

Pakistan battered Namibia by 102 runs in the first game of the day to secure their qualification, and South Africa beat the UAE by six wickets with almost seven overs to spare to finish this stage of the tournament with a 100% record – played four, won four. India and the Netherlands are currently doing battle, and an upset does not currently look terribly likely.

PHOTOGRAPHS

My usual sign off…

London Underground to King’s Lynn?!

A whimsical exercise inspired by a fairly newly constructed path in King’s Lynn, assessing how the real roundel might be brought here.

This is an exercise in purest whimsy, provoked by a recently constructed set of paths in Hardings Pits near King’s Lynn that I have dubbed ‘Roundel Path’ for their collective resemblance to London Underground’s classic symbol. Here is a photograph:

Roundel Path – I hope this photo, taken this morning illustrates the reason I have so named it.

Before moving in to the main body of this post I re-emphasise that this a purely whimsical exercise, and not even I would actually recommend the adoption of these schemes.

TWO POSSIBLE METHODS

These suggestions are listed from most to least fanciful with even the least fanciful still fairly so.

  1. Over a decade ago I did a personal survey of the Piccadilly line, which among other things recommended a northwards extension from Cockfosters to Welwyn Garden City. Welwyn Garden City is a station that trains from London to King’s Lynn pass but do not stop at en route. Extending all the way to Lynn would require a lot of adjustments at every station that the line would stop at – ideal platform heights are very different for surface and tube stocks which is why I consider this possibility even more unrealistic than the other.
  2. The slightly less ridiculous possibility makes use of the fact that the older subsurface London Underground lines are built to standard railway specifications and would at least not require any platform adaptations. It would require one completely new section of track, from King’s Cross St Pancras (Circle, Hammersmith&City and Metropolitan line shared platforms) to Finsbury Park or some point further north, with an intermediate station at Highbury& Islington, giving some useful connections, joining the existing tracks as soon as it is practical for it to come to the surface. That leaves one further question…

WHICH OF LINE SHOULD RUN THE NEW ROUTE?

There are three possibilities:

  1. The Metropolitan line once extended over 50 miles out into the countryside, and is still much more like a mainline railway than other lines. The disadvantage of the Metropolitan getting this route is that from Baker Street onward trains would heading northwest, having come from basically due north (with a tiny fraction of east).
  2. The Hammersmith and City line, which could abandon the Farringdon to Barking part of its route, all of which is served by other lines.
  3. The Wimbledon-Edgware Road section of the District line could add the stations as far as King’s Cross to its existing route and take over the new route.

PHOTOGRAPHS

I state once again that the foregoing has been a piece of whimsy, not anything serious, before applying my usual sign off…

A new bird sighting for me, tentatively identified as a grey wagtail.
This cormorant has evidently developed a taste for this particular tree canopy – I have seen it up there before.
Roundel Path

All Time XIs – Detective Fiction

An all time XI of players who have namesakes in detective stories and a photo gallery.

Today I select an XI of players who are namesakes of characters in detective fiction.

THE XI IN BATTING ORDER

  1. Percy Holmes (right handed opening batter, Yorkshire and England). In most eras other than the one he played in he would have been one of the first names on the England team sheet, especially given what a great partnership he formed with Herbert Sutcliffe. As it was he generally missed out due to the presence of Jack Hobbs. His record for Yorkshire was outstanding, and at the time of his retirement included five of the ten highest individual scores made for the county. His fictional alter ego is of course the one and only Sherlock Holmes.
  2. Herbert Sutcliffe (right handed opening batter, Yorkshire and England). One of the greatest opening batters ever to play the game, and shared 69 first class century opening stands with Holmes. He gets in by way of Magda Josza’s “Sherlock Holmes and the Femmes Fatales”, which features among others Lady Elizabeth Sutcliffe and her uncle Sir Vincent Sutcliffe.
  3. Fred Bakewell (right handed top order batter, Northamptonshire and England). By the time a car crash brought his career to a premature close he had done more than enough to establish himself as a great batter. His fictional equivalent is Diana Bakewell, heroine of the Rachel McLean/ Millie Ravensworth series of London cosy mysteries of which I have read three thus far.
  4. Jack Ryder (Australia, right handed batter, right arm medium fast bowler). One of the finer batters of the 1920s, his credits include a test match double century. He was also a useful enough bowler to occasionally be entrusted with the new ball. His namesake is James Ryder, villain in “The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle”.
  5. *Warwick Armstrong (Australia, right handed batter, leg spinner, captain). A magnificent all rounder, and a ruthlessly effective leader. The eight successive Ashes match victories he presided over (a 5-0 sweep in Australia in 1920-1, and the first three matches of the series in England in 1921) remains an all time record. His alter ego is Superintendent Armstrong from the Museum Detectives series.
  6. Vallance Jupp (Sussex, Northamptonshire, England, right handed batter, off spinner). In the 1920s he achieved the double feat of 1,000+ runs and 100+ wickets in FC matches eight times in consecutive seasons. I have slipped him in by means of a small piece of sleight of hand – one of The Railway Detective, inspector Robert Colbeck’s colleagues is an inspector Vallence, and by altering one letter I got in a link to my favourite of all detective series.
  7. +Adam Gilchrist (Australia, wicket keeper, left handed batter). |One of the all time greats of the game, although his legacy could be considered tarnished by the fact that a number sides nowadays blatantly sacrifice keeping quality for better batting from the keeper. One of the three students in the Holmes story of that title is named Gilchrist.
  8. Gus Atkinson (Surrey, England, right arm fast bowler, right handed batter). He has had a superb start to his England career, though like too many of his team mates he had a poor time on the recent tour of Australia. Gus the cat is a character in the London cosy mysteries that also gave us a Bakewell.
  9. Don Wilson (Yorkshire, England, left arm orthodox spinner, left handed batter). Though his England record was not great he took his first class wickets at 21 a piece. His alter ego is of course Daniel Wilson, one half of the Museum Detectives.
  10. Ted McDonald (Australia, Lancashire, right arm fast bowler, right handed batter). One half of the first great fast bowling pair to operate at test level along with Jack Gregory, he later became one the spearheads of Lancashire’s most successful ever period. Though I have to add a letter to his surname to do it, I have two very different alter egos for him: Alec MacDonald, one of the few Scotland Yarders Holmes actually treats with respect (see “The Valley of Fear”) and Kylie MacDonald, one of the pair of detectives in the elite NYPD Red unit that features in a series of books with that title, the first six by James Patterson and Marshall Karp, and the seventh by Marshall Karp.
  11. William Mycroft (Derbyshire, left arm fast bowler, right handed batter). Took over 800 FC wickets at 12 a piece in his career. With one Holmes brother sharing his name with an opening batter this XI ends with the other, Mycroft, sharing his name with an opening bowler.

This side has a more than adequate batting line up, and a stellar array of bowling talent – McDonald, Mycroft and Atkinson as front line pacers, with Ryder available as fourth seamer if needed, and Wilson, Jupp and Armstrong covering all the spin bases. I will not do honourable mentions for this one – there are a vast range of possibilities. Feel free to comment with your own ideas.

PHOTOGRAPHS

My usual sign off…

Scorchers Win BBL15

A brief account of today’s BBL Final and a photo gallery.

Today saw the final of the 15th edition of the men’s Big Bash League. The match featured the two most successful franchises in the history of the competition, Perth Scorchers and Sydney Sixers, at the former’s home ground since they had won the league stage of the tournament.

ONE WAY TRAFFIC

Scorchers won the bat flip, put Sixers in to bat and went about things utterly ruthlessly thereafter. Other than Steve Smith early on with 24 from 13 balls none of the Sixers batters really got going against some fine Scorchers bowling. David Payne, an English left arm seamer, was the star with 3-18 from his four overs, and he was a little unlucky those figures weren’t even better – Joel Davies was saved from becoming his fourth victim when a replay indicated that a diving catch in the deep had not in fact been cleanly taken. Sixers had only managed 132-9 from their 20 overs. Scorchers never looked in any danger of not scoring the runs. Although they made slightly heavy weather of finishing the job they still had six wickets and 2.3 overs in hand when Josh Inglis finished things with a six off Ben Dwarshuis, which is a thrashing in anyone’s language. Scorchers have now won six of the 15 editions of this tournament.

PHOTOGRAPHS

My usual sign off…

This Egret provided lots of pictures, as you will see…
…ending with this one.

England Win in Sri Lanka

An account of Sri Lanka v England at Colombo today and a photo gallery.

With a world cup in India approaching England are currently engaged in an away ODI series in Sri Lanka. Today saw the second match of that series.

A CONTRAST IN APPROACHES

While both sides were spin heavy (anything else would be ludicrous in Colombo) there was nevertheless a significant difference in the make up of the sides. Sri Lanka had four specialist bowlers, a genuine all rounder and two batting all rounders in their side, while England had only one player selected purely as a bowler (and even that player, Adil Rashid, has a better FC batting average than current test opener Zak Crawley) and a fistful of all rounders – Jamie Overton, Sam Curran, Liam Dawson, Will Jacks, Rehan Ahmed, Jacob Bethell, and a batter who bowls, Joe Root. With Crawley injured Rehan Ahmed was asked to open (his regular county slot is number three) alongside Ben Duckett. Sri Lanka won the toss and batted first.

THE PLAY

England bowled very well, with a total of six spin options wheeling down 40.3 overs, a national record for a 50 over innings, between them. Root somewhat bizarrely ended up bowling the final over of the innings, and was gifted two wickets, first Wellalage holing out to Sam Curran for 20, and then number 11 Asitha Fernando taking on a big hit and succeeding only in toe-ending the ball straight back to the bowler. Sri Lanka were all out for 219, which looked a good 20 below par even on that tricky pitch.

Rehan Ahmed did not do terribly well as makeshift opener, though Joe Root had made his way to the middle with less than 2o (the Ahmed/ Duckett opening stand) on the board on many occasions in his illustrious career. It was Root who ensured that no defence of that 219 would be possible. First he and Duckett added 68 for the second wicket, and then after Bethell had gone cheaply he was joined by Harry Brook for a fourth wicket stand that yielded 81 before Root finally fell for a 75 that was easily the equal of any 200 on a flat track. Buttler injected some late speed to proceedings, rattling up 33 not out from 21 balls, and it was Jacks who eventually scored the winning runs, a boundary off seamer Pramod Madushan with 3.4 overs remaining. England had won by five wickets, ending a sequence of 12 ODI away losses. With 2-12, two catches and that splendid 75 Joe Root was the only candidate for Player of the Match.

PHOTOGRAPHS

My usual sign off…

Three pictures of a raptor flying overhead
This one is probably the clearest of the three.

The Museum Detectives

A brief look at the Museum Detective novels of Jim Eldridge and a photo gallery.

This is a series of novels by Jim Eldridge. There are ten books so far in the series.

THE DETECTIVES

Daniel Wilson is a former Scotland Yard detective, sergeant under inspector Abberline during the investigation into the ripper murders. Abigail Fenton (later in the series Mrs Wilson) is a Cambridge educated archaelogist specialising in ancient Egypt. This partnership investigate crimes at various museums, hence their and the series’ title. Often, though not always, they are working in parallel with Scotland Yard. Superintendent Armstrong, a bully of such unpleasantness as to make Edward Marston’s superintendent Tallis look saintly by comparison (and lacking Tallis’ great virtue of actually being good at the job), does not like the pair at all, though inspector John Feather gets on well with them, recognising unlike Armstrong that they have a common goal.

THE CASES

Daniel and Abigail first overlap at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, and other non-London venues to feature are The Ashmolean, The Manchester Museum and the Louvre, in which last case Abigail finds herself a suspect at first. The London museums to feature are in chronological order The British Museum, The Natural History Museum, Madame Tussauds, The Victoria and Albert Museum, The National Gallery and the Tower of London (yes, among its many guises the Tower is London’s oldest museum). Sometimes the crimes involve museum personnel and sometimes not, but invariably the scope of the investigation widens beyond just the museum. Abigail is a fan of the then fledgling underground system, and they often use the Inner Circle (we are talking about the 1890s, so only the Metropolitan, District and their central combination, then known as the Inner Circle, and the City and South London Railway, then serving a mere six stations and unconnected to the others, are in existence, though the Metropolitan has already reached the furthest from Central London that any of the lines that became London Underground ever will -Brill in Buckinghamshire, 51 miles from Baker Street). Nevertheless, with the Wilson’s living within walking distance of Euston Square, Scotland Yard being near Embankment and one or too other useful locations appearing opportunities arise. In “Murder at The Tower of London” they have to chase up a witness in Loughton, then served by the Great Eastern Railway (this branch is now the eastern end of the Central line, but that development was almost half a century away when the action in the book was happening). The books are all splendid reads.

PHOTOGRAPHS

My usual sign off…

An Upset for the Ages

A mention of the biggest upset in the history of the FA Cup and a photo gallery.

The weekend just gone saw the third round of the FA Cup, football’s oldest domestic cup competition. This is the stage of the tournament at which the big beasts enter the fray, and there is always the possibility of an upset…

A TINY DAVID AND A HUGE GOLIATH

One of the early kickoffs on Saturday saw lowly Macclesfield Town, a club that only re-formed in 2020 after having gone bust, and who are still in the sixth tier of the English football pyramid entertaining Crystal Palace, the FA Cup holders, and 117 places above Macclesfield in the pyramid.

Macclesfield were inspired by that occasion, and not only took the lead, they actually went two goals clear. Crystal Palace scored one late on in the game, but their revival was too little too late, and when the final whistle went it confirmed officially the greatest shock upset in the over 150 year history of this tournament. Macclesfield Town, the lowest ranked side to have made it this far in the tournament (having come in in the second qualifying round) had successfully taken down the holders.

PHOTOGRAPHS

My usual sign off…

Yesterday the ponds near my home were frozen so solid that bricks were able to rest on the surface of one of them.
An unusual visitor to the Kettlewell Lane woods, of which I was able to get several photographs.
These last two pictures were taken today at the Nar outffall.

Renegades Blown Away by Hurricanes

A look back at todays BBL game between Melbourne Renegades and Hobart Hurricanes and a photo gallery.

This morning UK time saw Melbourne Renegades entertain Hobart Hurricanes at Geelong. This post looks back at the match.

THE RENEGADES INNINGS

The match started strangely, with Josh Brown allowing Chris Jordan to bowl a maiden in the first over of the match. Maidens are rare birds in T20s, and I cannot recall a previous example of a match in this format starting with such an over. Tim Seifert got a single early in the second over, but off the fourth ball thereof Brown fell to a catch by Nikhil Chaudhary off Riley Meredith for an eight ball duck, an absurd innings in a T20. The third and fourth overs, bowled by Nathan Ellis and then Meredith bowling his second were taken for 17 runs each, and a Power Play score of 36-1 looked respectable. However, Hurricanes immediately tightened things up. In the ninth over Jordan bowled Seifert for 34 to make it 63-2. With the penultimate ball of the 10th over English leg spinner Rehan Ahmed bowled Mohammad Rizwan for 32, which brought about the mid-innings drinks break at 69-3. Two overs later Jake Fraser-McGurk and Ollie Peake were still together, and there was an obvious case for activating the Power Surge. However Renegades did the cowardly thing and held back in the hope of getting a better opportunity. Five balls into the 13th over Peake was well caught by Matthew Wade off Nathan Ellis to make it 86-4, and a chance to use the Surge with two batters who have both already faced a few balls had been squandered. Three balls into the 14th over and Hurricanes other leg spinner, Bangladeshi Rishad Hossain, bowled Fraser-McGurk to make it 88-5. Hassan Khan and Will Sutherland revived things for Renegades, and they eventually activated the Surge for overs 17 and 18. The first of these overs was beneficial to their cause, but the second, bowled by Jordan, was ruinous. Hassan Khan was out to the first ball of it, and Sutherland to the fourth, to make it 126-7. Jordan conceded one more run in the over, but still at that point had 3-9 from three overs. The last ball of the 19th over saw Gurinder Sandhu fall to a catch by Hossain off Ellis to make it 133-8. The final over was Jordan’s fourth and last as well, and with the second ball of it he accounted for Fergus O’Neill to make it 135-9. Jordan did not manage to complete his five-for, and ten runs accrued from the last four balls of the innings. However, 145-9 still looked a hopelessly inadequate score, and 4-1-19-4 was still an excellent set of bowling figures. Jordan has played over 400 T20s in his long career, and has never yet taken a five-for, though todays figures were not quite a career best – he has recorded 4-6 in the past. Rishad Hossain had 1-21 from his four overs and Rehan Ahmed 1-25 from his. If Stokes is still worried about Bashir’s lack of skill with the bat (see here) then perhaps Ahmed, a genuinely front line bowler could come into the side. It would be far from the first time that an English player in Australia not as part of a tour party has been drafted in in an emergency – George Gunn, in Australia for health reasons, was called in to the 1907-8 touring party and proceeded to top score in both innings on test debut, while in the 1990s Gus Fraser, omitted by Illingworth, was clever enough to arrange to be in Australia playing grade cricket, and soon found himself back in the side.

THE HURRICANES CHASE

Mitchell Owen fell to the first ball of the chase, caught behind by Rizwan off Jason Behrendorff. However Nikhil Chaudhary, recently demoted from opening to number three, then hit the second, third and fourth balls of that opening over for fours and Hurricanes were on their way, and never really looked back. The other opener, Tim Ward, was also dismissed in the Power Play, for 8, but Hurricanes already had 38 on the board by then. It was the third wicket stand between Chaudhury and Ben McDermott that killed the game stone dead. At the halfway mark Hurricanes were 95-2, with these two still together, and activating the Power Surge at the earliest possible opportunity was a blatantly obvious thing to do, and Hurricanes duly did so. Although they lost Chaudhury to the last ball of the Surge, caught by Fraser-McGurk off Sandhu for 79 (38) the two overs had also yielded 36 runs (18 each), and a mere 15 were needed for victory by then. It took 1.5 overs to knock those runs off, with no further wickets falling. McDermott ended on 49 not out (33). Hurricanes had won by seven wickets with 6.1 overs to spare and went top of the table. Jordan was named Player of the Match for his great bowling. Scorecard here.

PHOTOGRAPHS

My usual sign off…

An Even First Day

A look back at day one of the third Ashes test in Adelaide and a photo gallery.

The third test match of the ongoing series between Australia and England’s men’s teams got underway overnight UK time. This post looks back at a curious day’s play.

THE PRELIMINARIES

England had announced their team early, in keeping with their recent methods in this department. The fact that Shoaib Bashir missed out for a third straight match, creating the possibility that series will be decided before he plays a game, raised eyebrows. The problem with this selection from England is that they fast tracked him into the test side with this specific series most in mind, which makes then sidelining him for each of the first three matches look bizarre. Australia had intended to drop Usman Khawaja, which could well have ended his test career, but then Steve Smith experienced giddiness and nausea while batting in the nets and it was deemed serious enough to put him out of the match, so Khawaja was back in the side. Australia won the toss, and there was never much doubt about the decision, so it was over to England’s bowlers to see what they could do.

A CURATE’S EGG PERFORMANCE

England did not bowl very well overall, but they had some assistance from the Australian batting, who seemed somewhat infected by their opponents freneticism at the crease. Immediately after lunch, when Marnus Labuschagne and Cameron Green suffered almost identical ultra-soft dismissals in the space of three balls, each hitting deliveries from Archer straight to midwicket and suddenly the score was 94-4 it looked very good for England. Khawaja and Alex Carey regained the initiative for Australia, but then Khawaja tried to go big against the part time spin of WG Jacks and succeeded in holing out Josh Tongue for 82. Carey, supported in turn by Josh Inglis, Pat Cummins and Mitchell Starc proceeded to a splendid maiden Ashes ton. However Jacks showed something of the original WG’s knack for inducing batters to get themselves out, drawing an injudicious shot from Carey which resulted in a catch to Jamie Smith. The day ended with Australia on 326-8. With temperatures in Adelaide forecast to reach 39 degrees on day two (two degrees above the cut off point for an abandonment during my brief career as an umpire in Under 14s Whites matches there) what happens then will have a big influence on the outcome of the match and thus whether England can get back into the series. If they can get the last two wickets quickly and then bat for the rest of the day, forcing Australia to labour in the field through the fiercest heat they will have a good chance. Cummins has just returned earlier than expected from an injury, and a long, hot innings in the field would be a big early test of just how ready he was to make that comeback. A concern for England, given their controversial decision to overlook the specialist spinner is the fact that it was Will Jacks, definitely a batter who bowls off spin, who ended bowling the most overs for them on day one.

PHOTOGRAPHS

My usual sign off…

The first five images are of a gold ducat that has been manipulated in some way – the 1583 date, clearly visible, does not match with the style of portrait. These images did their job, and the coin has been sold for a negotiated price not hugely much less than the original sale price.
This style of portrait was used only in 1585, 1586 and 1587,, not 1583.
This image comes from our upcoming two-day sale on January 13th and 14th. A full catalogue can be viewed on the-saleroom or easyliveauction.
A cormorant right at the topmost point of a willow tree. This willow overlooks the Townshend Terrace pond in North Lynn.

Renegades Rampant

An account of todays match in the men’s Big Bash League, a pungent comment re England’s chosen XI for Adelaide tomorrow and a photo gallery.

The Women’s Big Bash League 11th edition finished on Saturday, and the 15th edition of the men’s tournament started yesterday. Today Melbourne Renegades faced Brisbane Heat in a night match in Geelong. This post looks back at that match.

RENEGADES RUNFEST

Things initially did not look overly bright for Renegades, with only Tim Seifert of the early batters looking good. Josh Brown managed 15 (13), which looked positively explosive compared to number three Mohammad Rizwan’s 3 (10). Jake Fraser-McGurk had just started to look like he might provide Seifert some decent support when he suffered a stupid dismissal, walking across his stumps against seamer Jack Wildermuth, missing and being bowled. This attempt to open up the leg side was particularly ill-judged given that Heat had stocked that side with plenty of fielders. Oliver Peake, 19 years old, came in at number five, and batted magnificently. He and Seifert put on 121 together in precisely nine overs (9.3 to 18.3) of the innings, Seifert reaching three figures. Wildermuth got them both in the space of three balls, 203-3 becoming 204-5. Shaheen Shah Afridi had a nightmare with the ball, which ended in bizarre fashion, when he was ordered away from the bowling crease after producing two dangerously high full tosses in a single over, the 18th over of the innings. His figures when his spell was compulsorily halted were 2.4.-0-43-0. Nathan McSweeney completed that 18th over. The 20th over was bowled by Xavier Bartlett, and in the circumstances he did well to only concede a further eight.

THE HEAT RESPONSE

At no stage were Heat close to being up with the rate, and as can happen in such circumstances that required rate climbed alarmingly in the second half of their innings. Only a late flourish between youngster Hugh Weibgen and veteran Jimmy Peirson, which produced 78 runs from 5.5 overs enabled them to keep the margin respectable. There was time in the dying embers of the game for Afridi to add a duck with the bat to his disaster class with the ball. Afridi’s dismissal, clean bowled by Gurinder Singh Sandhu, left Heat needing 17 from one ball, and they managed two off that final ball. Melbourne Renegades had won by 14 runs. Their best bowler on the day was Will Sutherland who took 3-33 from his four overs, while Jason Behrendorff had 2-34 from his four and Sandhu 2-35 from his four.

PHOTOGRAPHS

Tomorrow night UK time the third match of the Ashes series gets underway in Adelaide. England have confirmed their playing XI, with the only change from Brisbane being Tongue coming in for Atkinson. That means that Shoaib Bashir, fast tracked into the England team and kept there in spite of some less than convincing returns at test level with this specific series in mind may end up not participating until it has already been lost. However England’s actual selections work out they have made themselves look fools over Bashir. Now for my usual sign off…

These last few photos are of a massive fly past of migrating birds. There is virtually no overlap between the birds being photographed here. The pictures were taken on Columbia Way at about 3:30PM, as I returned from my post-lunch walk.