Almost two dull days for the bowlers in the Melbourne tour match were completed with some spice towards the end of the last session of the second day. At the close of play, Victoria had scored 278 runs for the loss of six wickets.
England started the second day of the match with overnight batsmen Andrew Strauss and Ian Bell. Both the batsmen started confidently and scored fifties for their team. Strauss had a lucky escape when he nicked one to Cameron White who was unable to hold
on a regulation chance. Strauss who was batting on 40 at that time, continued to score a fifty before he eventually was caught at mid-wicket off the bowling of http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Jon-Holland-c1724.
Ian Bell continued his good form and scored another fifty, his fifth consecutive on the tour. Bell looked as solid as he has been and did not provide much of an opportunity to the bowlers. He remained unbeaten on 60 with seven boundaries in the innings.
He was accompanied by Paul Collingwood who scored an unbeaten 29 including a towering six before the innings was declared.
The visitors declared the innings on 184 for the loss of two wickets. The Victorian team started well with an opening stand of 72 runs. http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Aaron-Finch-c881 missed out on a half century and was dismissed for 45 runs. The second wicket stand was also a good one which
took the total to 147. http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Ryan-Carters-c2386 who missed out in the first innings played well for his 68 runs. Victoria lost five wickets after that in a span of 50 runs before Clint Mckay and Jayde Herrick blazed their way to an 81-run stand.
Mckay remained unbeaten on 58 off just 27 balls. His innings included seven boundaries and three sixes. He was well supported by Jayde Herrick who also made a quick fire 40 off 19 balls. Herrick struck five boundaries and two sixes.
The English seamers were unable to pick any wickets but it was Paul Collingwood who sparked things up with three quick wickets in five overs. The left-arm spinner http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Monty-Panesar-c2024 also grabbed a couple of wickets. The surprise wicket came off the bowling of
Andrew Strauss who bowled his rare china-man spell. This was only his third first-class wicket.
Towards the end of the day, England conceded 88 runs in just the seven overs bowled between Strauss and Eoin Morgan. The English team said that the runs were conceded to make the match interesting and challenging. The middle order batsman, Ian Bell commented,
“We want to make a competitive game tomorrow, so in order for that to happen we had to allow http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Victoria-c859 to get enough runs to make it competitive tomorrow.”
Bell also said that the wicket in Melbourne was not good enough for the bowers to get any breakthroughs and it would be unjust to assess their performances on this wicket. He expects the wicket in Perth to be much livelier than the one in Melbourne. He also
said that it is better for the bowers to have bowled on this dead wicket before the start of the next match. According to Bell, it is better to practice on a dead wicket for a bowler heading into the match rather than bowling on a seaming track and grabbing
wickets with a few good balls.
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