As nothing much has happened in my personal life over the past few days (it’s been a chilled out weekend for me) I am going to talk sport, so let’s start with cricket. India levelled the one day international series with England at Bristol beating the home team by 9 runs. India won the toss and elected to bat first and capitalised on the good batting conditions knocking up a very respectable 329 – 7. Sachin Tendulkar top scored falling just one short of a century backed up by Rahul Dravid who knocked up an unbeaten 92. Yuvraj Singh and Sourav Ganguly made useful contributions of 49 and 39 respectively. Karthik, Agarkar and Powar wickets all fell for one run giving the English hope. England made a great start to their run chase finding themselves 76 – 0 after 11 overs, but then disaster both Alistair Cook and Matt Prior’s wickets fell in two balls in the 12th over by the hand of Munaf Patel. Kevin Pietersen was next to fall victim to the Indian attack for just 25 runs. Ian Bell top scored for England hitting 64 from 96 balls, which is why I don’t think he is one day material, great test player, but doesn’t have a high enough strike rate to warrant his inclusion in the one day side in my opinion, but a useful contribution none-the-less. It seems that Andrew Flintoff’s batting is still not what it should be being caught on 9 off seven deliveries. Dimitri Mascarenhas was the star of the England innings hitting five sixes in a quickfire 52 off 39 deliveries, and Stuart Broad whacked the ball around the park to score 20 runs in the final over, but despite the late efforts of Mascarenhas and Broad, it was too little too late, but it’s good to see the tail enders clobbering the ball around the park! A good game to watch from the neutrals point of view, but disappointing for the English, but credit to India they were well worth the victory, bring on the third one day game tomorrow at Edgbaston!
Next up, it’s Saturday which means football and first up, Plymouth Argyle who had an away tie at Barnsley. And the home team were victorious beating the Pilgrims in a five goal thriller. Istvan Ferenczi opened the scoring for the home side from the easiest of chances tapping in Kayode Odejayi’s cross in the 12th minute. Dominik Werling doubled the lead with a rocket of a free kick just before the half time interval. Brian Howard converted Ferenczi cross from 12 yards out to make it 3 – 0 to the home side on the 60th minute. You would think that’d be the end of the game, but Argyle really don’t know when they are beaten, point man Barry Hayles struck a sweet volley from 12 yards out to deny Barnsley a clean sheet, then six minutes later Nick Chadwick converted Sylvan Ebanks-Blake cross into a second goal for the Pilgrims. But despite all of Argyle’s late pressure they simply couldn’t get the final goal to claim a point from Oakwell. It seems to me that it’s business as usual, Argyle can score goals, but the good ship Argyle is still leaking, Argyle desperately need to plug those holes if they want to improve on last season. Judging by the last couple of performances Argyle will be struggling to claim a play off spot, but that said it’s still a long way to go this season, we are only three games into the season, one win, one draw and one loss, let’s hope for improvement, I know Ian Holloway won’t rest on his laurels.
Liverpool had better luck beating Sunderland 2 – 0 at the Stadium of Light. Mohamed Sissoko made a clear claim to a starting place in the Liverpool squad with a superb power shot from 25 yard deceiving Craig Gordon in the flight to put the Reds ahead in the 37th minute. Liverpool had to wait until the 87th to make the game safe with another power shot from the edge of the penalty area from provider of the first goal Andriy Voronin. In fairness Sunderland never really looked like scoring, but played with passion and dedication, but Liverpool were simply too strong and could have easily been 3 or 4 up if the Liverpool attack were a little more accurate. Liverpool are currently in 4th in the league after four games pending the results from Old Trafford and The Riverside, still early days, but many are tipping Liverpool to be genuine title contenders, but I think it’ll be difficult with Manchester United and Chelsea’s multi-million pound budgets, it’d be nice to see the Reds at the top of the pile at the end of the season, but I’m keeping my feet on the ground!
One player that impressed me despite being on the losing team is Manchester City’s Kasper Schmeichel, He was more than equal to everything that Arsenal could throw at the young Dane and even saved a penalty from Robin van Persie, definite shades of his father Peter. He even came up in the dying moments of the game and got a clear header on the Arsenal goal, what a story that would have been, City’s goalkeeper claiming a point for The Blues in the dying moments at the Emirates Stadium. Sadly City lost the game 1 – 0, but a great performance all round, I think Kasper could become a legendary goalkeeper like his father over the coming years, I wont if we can make him an Englishman? God knows that England needs a decent goalkeeper at the moment, I think City will do very well this season!
Finally, Formula 1; It wasn’t the best of days for the Brits on F1, Jenson Button had to start from the back of the grid alongside team mate Rubens Barrichello after both cars had engine changes, but Button fought back to 13th which is good considering the car he has underneath him. Anthony Davidson finished in 14th just behind Jenson after qualifying in 11th, David Coulthard drove a sensible race, stayed out of trouble and finished just inside the top 10. Lewis Hamilton finished the race in 5th after having a tyre de-lamination 15 laps from the end of the race while running in 3rd gifting team mate Fernando Alonso a podium finish allowing him to slash Hamilton’s lead to five points. Hamilton was lucky to finish in 5th as the tyre de-lamination damaged the aerodynamics of his car and was being closed down by Heikki Kovalainen in the final 15 laps. The Ferrari’s were the class of the field, McLaren had no answer to Ferrari’s pace, Hamilton was just about hanging on to the back of Raikkonen’s Ferrari until his tyre issues. Felipe Massa led the Ferrari duo home to leapfrog Raikkonen again. The advantage is still with McLaren at the moment, Felipe Massa is 10 points behind Alonso and and further five points behind Hamilton. But one of the Ferrari’s could still win the championship, but I think they’ll need to choose a driver to chase the championship as if they battle it out like they are, it’ll be difficult for the Maranello based team to overhaul McLaren. Nick Heidfeld claimed another decent points haul in 4th and team mate Robert Kubica finished in 8th claiming another point, but finished only 10 seconds off 6th spot. Heikki Kovalainen and Nico Rosberg claimed 6th and 7th respectively. Next race will also favour Ferrari as it’s Ferrari’s home track at Monza, so I expect the Prancing Horse to take more points out of McLaren. Then we go to the legendary Spa Francorchamps in Belguim, which could go either way, but McLaren will need to improve their pace to compete as the Woking squad have no answers for Ferrari’s pace at this time!
Oh, just remembered about this; how the hell can a bank lose over £70 of my money. I noticed on Friday that my available balance and current balance didn’t tally up, my available balance was almost £40 less than my current balance. On Friday I deposited £115, paid my mobile phone bill which was £33.24, I bought Half-Life 2 Episode One from Steam which cost £5.84 and finally spent £8.77 at the Co-op. This all means that I have a total of £47.85 to come out from a balance of £186.67, but online banking is telling me that I have an available balance of £66.17. Maths has never been my strong point, but that really doesn’t add up, £186.67 minus £47.85 equals £138.82. I went down to ask about discrepancies on my bank statement on Friday, but they conveniently had a staff shortage, so I couldn’t see anyone, and there was a 2 hour wait when I called them up. As things stand I don’t have enough cash to pay my rent with the missing £70+ so I will have to deal with it tomorrow as I can’t have money vanishing. There’s no reason for this, it’s just gone, no trace of any debits on my statement. I am going to stop depositing money if this is going to keep happening and look into opening another bank account elsewhere as this is unacceptable!