Poor fellow. Its funny I guess but very unfortonate.
Anyway just got home from the game. The rain was a shame but I was thrilled the whole game got played. Sri Lanka made an average score. It wasn't enough runs really. Its a 300 wicket and I think we would of chased down anything around that mark. Bond bowled superb and Vettori had a little bit of an off day, was a good pitch and the ball wasn't spinning. Even Murili got a little more stick then usual yet he was still fantastic. As soon as I saw Astle get a hit from the boundary for that run-out I told the erson next to me, you know it might just be Astles day. And it sure as hell was. The Sri Lankan opener Tharanga played a very good innings, man of the match performance in my books and it was backed up nicely by Atapattu. I just feel that Sri Lanka needed to get more runs on the board early and at the end.
Astle played the innings really wall for the most part. He was pretty solid and kept making the singles to keep us with the run rate required. He or Fulton didn't take risks as they wern't needed. Good partnership from both. I am thrilled for Astle, the crowd got behind him, it was really good to see. Hes back in some form. In the last few overs he batted he was out of no balls twice. I guess 1 makes up for the poor decision last match.
At the end the umpires were pretty good for staying on, the umpiring decision on Marshall wasn't a good one. Another out of form player who really didn't need that.
There were a lot of appeals against us, I don't know if any were definaty wrong, if they were all right it was a good effort.
Vincent started with a bang like usual. And Cairns finished it by smashing Murili onto the roof. Gotta love that Cairnsy. Was good to see him bring up 200 wickets as well and bowl pretty well at the death.
The Sri Lankan catching was fantastic. Can't say the same about the fielding. Far too many overthrows and misfields. Whilst it looked close, it really wasn't. We had overs to spare and two fantastic hitters in next (Oram and McCullum) who we didn;t even need. We were playing it pretty safe. We would of been a lot more aggressive if the score was larger.
Hopefully we set a target in Wellington, we are going to need to be able to do that too for the World Cup. Was a much better game then the last. So i enjoyed it aside from the rain.
but it is a shame. Hope he is fit for the VB series. Great win by NZ though and much better fight shown by Sri Lanka. Hope they can continue their winning streak and nice to see Astle back.
