Cook and Trott toy with Australia as Gabba test ends in a draw
The first Ashes test ended in a complete contrast to how it had begun as England batsmen put up a monumental batting performance to take the honours in the drawn test.
The English top order tore apart the Australian bowlers amassing an astonishing total of 517/1 before declaring their innings on the final day of the test match.
They were indebted to a second wicket stand; in fact an unbeaten stand of 349 runs between Jonathan Trott and Alastiar Cook which enabled them to play out a draw after Peter Siddle’s superlative bowling effort on the opening day followed
by tons by Mike Hussey and Brad Haddin had put the Aussies in a dominating position.
The Aussie effort now seems to be a tale of a different match as England dominated the last two days of the test in one of the most incredible batting displays in the second innings of a test match in recent years.
Cook and Trott added 208 more runs on the final day to take their partnership to 349, for Trott it was the second three hundred run partnership in the last two tests.
He and Stuart Broad were involved in a world record stand for the 8th wicket against http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Pakistan-c755 in the ill-fated Lords test last August.
English captain Andrew Strauss who himself scored 110 in the second innings, was full of praise for the duo.
However he rated Cook’s innings as the best ever by an Englishman in Australia.
"I'm not great on cricketing history, but you'd be hard-pressed to think of a better innings in http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Australia-c746," said Strauss. "It must be a long time ago that a player batted as well as Cooky did, with the concentration to see it through for such a long time.
It's one of the really special innings from an England player."
"It's just great we came back into the game, managed to get a draw and finished so strongly," said Strauss. "There's not a long turnaround before Adelaide and both sets of players will be keen to come out strong on the first morning. Everyone talks about
how important the first Test is against Australia in Brisbane, so to get through that unscathed from the position we were in is a great effort, although clearly we would've wanted to win the game."
Cook hit as many as 26 fours in his unbeaten 235, while Trott scored 135 off 266 balls hitting 19 fours in the process.
Australia’s four frontline bowlers were hammered all over the park and a bitterly disappointed Ricky Ponting had no answers about their insipid performance.
Ponting was also outraged at what he believes is wrong use of technology that denied him a catch of Cook, which he claims was cleanly taken whilst it was referred to the third umpire by umpires Aleem Dar and Billy Doctrove as they were not sure whether Ponting
had taken the catch or not.
The chance only came after Cook had crossed the 200 mark, yet Ponting was not a pleased man.
"If it was the first wicket of the innings I might have been a bit more annoyed," he said.
"I do get a little bit annoyed with it because I think its blight on the game, trusting in technology that's not good enough to show them. I could have thrown the ball up straight away and nobody would have questioned it."
"It's up to the umpires now, they've set that standard and they have to make it consistent all the way through," he said. "Not that long ago, you look back to a Test match played at Lord's where there was a pretty obvious one that went the other way."
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