There has been a lot of cricket this week and my employers had an auction on Wednesday. This post looks at both things.
AUSTRALIA IN COMMAND OF WOMEN’S ASHES
The One Day Internation segment of the Women’s Ashes multi-format series is now over, and Australia have won all three matches, giving them a 6-0 lead with ten further points to play for. England have to win all three T20Is and the test match that ends the series to regain the Women’s Ashes.
I covered the first match in an earlier post. The second match was from an England perspective the most disappointing of the series – the bowlers did superbly to dismiss Australia for 180, only for the batting to fold miserably to 159 all out and defeat by 21 runs.
The third match, which took place overnight UK time, started well, with four Australian wickets down fairly quickly, but the middle and lower order wrested the initiative back, Ash Gardner leading the way with her maiden international ton – 102 off 102 balls – with Beth Mooney and Tahlia McGrath each scoring 50s and Georgia Wareham giving the total a final boost with a spectacular 38* off 12 balls. This led to a final total of 308-8 for the Australian Women. England were never really in the hunt, and ended up losing by 222 runs. Player of the Match Gardner was involved in the most spectacular moment of this innings, the dismissal of Sophie Ecclestone. Ecclestone went big, and looked for all the world to be scoring six when Gardner leaped high to catch the ball, and then had the presence of mind to realize she was about to land beyond the boundary, throw it back up, run in and catch it again. A video of this dismissal can be seen here.
THE AUCTION
The January auction, a small one of 386 lots, featuring vintage radios and clocks, militaria, some very well preserved 1970s posters and a few other bits got underway at 10AM sharp on Wednesday. A malfunction on the part of easyliveauction, one of the two online platforms we use, caused an early halt – the problem, which was definitely at their end, was not resolved for some hours – after just over 300 of the lots had gone under the hammer. However, up to that point it had been very successful, with many items exceeding estimates by considerable amounts. Along the way, lot 169 went to me. This lot was a collection of stuff relating to a trip to Normandy run by the Southern Railway in 1934, in a tour company paper wallet. It used to be commonplace for railway companies to also operate ferry services, enabling the whole route to be booked through themselves, and ensuring that the boat departure would mesh well with the arrival of the train at the nearest station. I end this section with a gallery devoted to this item…
THREE BBL KNOCKOUT SLOTS CONFIRMED
There are just three group fixtures left in this year’s BBL. With today’s match between the two Sydney outfits, Sixers and Thunder, ruined by the weather we now know that Hobart Hurricanes (played nine, 15 points) are winning the league stage, whatever happens in their final group fixture against Melbourne Stars. Sydney Sixers are second and Sydney Thunder are third, both sufficiently clear of fourth for these spots to be certain. None of the remaining five teams are entirely ruled out of qualifying yet, although tomorrow’s two matches will winnow down the possibilities. It will be Sunday’s match between Stars and Hurricanes that will finally settle it. There is nothing at stake in that game for the Hurricanes – they as mentioned are qualifying as winners of the league stage even if they lose that match, whereas for Stars it will be a chance to complete a Houdini act – they started with five straight losses and they have a legitimate chance of qualifying.
PHOTOGRAPHS
My usual sign off…
aspiblog 