I was there yesterday (day 3). It was a repeat performance of Melbourne in terms of the weather. It was hardly raining. Not even drizzling. You could sit out in it and not get wet. But the occassional errant drop meant that play could not start. The covers came off and then went straight back on. But play finally got under way.
Gilchrist cut loose. Someone forgot to tell him that he was playing in a
test match. We were on square at the Paddington end. On the pull shot for the left hander. I feared for my safety everytime Gilchrist was on strike. I doubted my ability to catch the ball. Given the way it was hit it would likely have caused serious burns on my hands – requiring skin grafts – given the energy that was transferred into that ball on contact with Gilly’s bat. Warney had already almost killed a child by slamming the ball on a low trajectory into the crowd while warming up.
The other highlight of the day, I think surpassing Pontings 200, was McGrath’s promotion to 10, his beautiful batsmanesque push through the leg side for 4 due to the incomprehensible Pakistani off side field setting, and then his beautiful, perfect, inevitable failure – he is after all and must be number 11. I had left by this time to go to work.
Day 2 was warm and sleepy and flawless. Ponting and Marto didn’t hit a single ball in the air. They just pushed and placed and timed through their entire partnership. They just accumulated. No one noticed them scoring runs, they just did. I was expecting Ponting to unleash his shots at any moment. But he was batting far too perfectly to do that. The sleepiness showed on the crowd, who managed to tie a string of the 3-mobile thundersticks together that stretched almost the entire length of the ground, from the Dally Messenger to the Brewongle stands.
Day 1 seems so long ago that all that I remember is Salman’s 100. MacGill must have bowled well, but from our seats, it was impossible to detect the nuances of his performance. The scorecard was amusing – all the wickets credited to Macs and Mcs.