Flintoff magic

4:14pm IST
Just saw a brilliant innings from Mr Flintoff. He is starting to look really really exceptional. He reminds me a little of Klusener- not so much in his batting style, but the way the innings is approached- slow and steady. He has so much confidence in his ability to up the tempo at some point that he plays prety slowly. In this case, it wasnt till the 45th over that he looked anything more than just awake. But then he decided to launch into the Lankan attack, and then they'd had it. If I'm not mistaken they were 173 after 45 overs and the commentators were still talking about 210, and how 230 would be a winnign score but hey, England must reach 210. They scored 78 runs in the remaining overs, and impossibly Flintoff reached his century. 104 off 91, and some of the shots were absolutley stunning. He somehow seems to be able to get under the most pitched up of balls, even yorkers. And once he is under them they go far far away.
I can't think of too many others right now hitting the ball the way he does, with the exception of Andrew Symonds. Gilchirst hasn't done it in a while, Sehwag is woefully out of form, Jayasuriya is fading, and while Gayle is up there somewhere, he's nothing like Flintoff. He's started scoring tons at no.5 so easily, and most people hardly get centuries in that poistions.

"At the ICC Champions Trophy, one-day cricket has become one-way cricket."
Simon Briggs in the Daily Telegraph after Australia's match against New Zealand was almost as one-sided as all the previous games.
That's pretty funny, really. As is this reaction to the minnows being able to learn from these thrashings.
"I hope they can learn something - but I am not sure that they will."
Ricky Ponting questions the inclusion of USA in the Champions Trophy

The Arjuna Awards fiasco is just that- another fiasco where the common man really doesn't bother too much about the awards anymore. Why in heaven's name would they decide to give Bhajji an Arjuna award? An ignore Arjun Atwal, Bobby Aloysius and others? Apparently" there was only Yuvraj and Harbhajan shortlisted, so we felt that Harbhajan had done much more". But is it necessary that every year there has to be at least one cricketer in the list?