Plenty has and will be written about Australia's win over the Paki's in the 2010 New Years Test at the SCG yesterday. I left the office early to watch Hauritz clean up the tail. It was a cracking game of cicket and is a good example of why test cricket is one of the greatest games on earth.


My only regret is that the game didn't stretch to five days so that I have something to occupy myself with in the office today, besides facebook and wikipedia.

Anyway, I wanted to comment not on the game, but on Peter Roebucks remarks about it in the smh online. You can read his comments here:


http://www.smh.com.au/sport/cricket/tourists-snatch-defeat-from-jaws-of-victory-20100106-lucs.html

Roebuck often has interesting things to say about the players and the games, and while it takes some getting used to, his prose is descriptive and colourful.

That said, he's had a shocker with his commentary of this match. From his vantage point safe in the grandstand, he has written of the Paki's captain, Mo Yousef. He canned the Paki's batting, and said the Aussie's were average and lucky. He plants caveats at the start of the article so he can't be accused of whingeing about the game, but I'm going to do it anyway.

Roebuck you're a whinger

Test cricket is about exposing weakness under sustained pressure, and this test showed that both sides are flawed in that respect. I'd argue that's what made it such a great game. The Paki's destroyed us in the first innings against all expectation, then we made an average total in reply. We started well in the second innings only to collapse again, finally to be rescued by a great lower order effort by Hussey and Siddle. This made the game exciting-did we actually have a chance?

Then the bowlers came out and the rest is history. In Test matches it's the weaknesses of the players as well as the strengths that makes it fascinating because players have to battle against not only the opposition but their emotions, self belief, confidence and form.

Roebuck has missed the point. Sure the standard could have been higher. Yes there were lot's of get out of jail free cards to Hussey. But how many swings-and-misses did Peter Siddle endure while he bowled? Luck cuts both ways.

It was great to see a game where the bowlers dominated. Roebuck has seen the errors and largely written the game off as an underwhelming display of mental weakness from the Pakistani's and opportunism from the Aussies.