December 24, 1984: Australia loses a women's Test to England.
September 19, 1988: Australia follows on in a men's Test match against Pakistan.

Board's itinerary goof up leaves team stranded in Bulawayo
Ashish Shukla/Press Trust of India, 27.8.05

The BCCI's revenge perhaps for player tardiness in Mumbai and Harare?

Come on in, Damien Martyn, your use-by date is up. And you too, Hayden. Don't you look away either, Kasprowicz.

It was just one awful day for Australia. Infredible. Ingeraintable even. Australia may yet get away with saving the Ashes, but we can already declare England the moral winners.

Another great moment in bureaucratic cartography.

Parrot habitat enlarged after logging mistake. 27/08/2005. ABC News Online

I've added quite a few more sites to the blogroll on the right-hand side of this page, making a total of 24 in the list. I've added the ABC Sports Desk, even though they removed me from their blogroll sometime in the last fortnight... Some stylesheet tidying-up in progress as well. I'm mulling over the prospect of adding some of my older stuff to the current blog as well. Potentially, there could be material stretching back as far as 1994 if I go ahead with that.

The ICC announced tonight that their second annual awards presentation will be held in Sydney on October 11. This takes place between the Johnnie Walker one-dayers and the Johnnie Walker six-dayer, which begins at the SCG on the 14th.

The media release from the ICC says that the evening will be held at "one of Australia's most prestigious hotels". Sounds to me like they haven't booked one yet, have they?

Something I thought I would never see, well not in this decade anyway, appears to be unfolding at New Road, Worcester, today.

It's lunch on Day Three of the Second Women's Test between England and Australia. The visitors made 131 in their first innings. England, after being 227 for 9 at the close of the second day, advanced to 289 all out. Australia faced sixteen overs before lunch. They are currently 13 for 3.

When Tait begins to bowl the batsman trembles at the knees,
The ball comes humming down the pitch just like a hive of bees,
The other day the bails went flying right out to the gate,
The batsman smiled a sickly smile and whispered "Tait á Tait".

- Jack Lumsdaine, "So This Is Cricket", 1932
(OK, so he was actually talking about Maurice Tate)

Nothing will stop me from cursing the England and Wales Cricket Board for their counterproductive policy of scheduling women's tours simultaneously with the men. There's an important, indeed, sudden-death women's Test match going on at New Road, Worcester which is being totally eclipsed for media attention by the most riveting men's Ashes series in almost a quarter of a century.