AUSTRALIA BEATEN

I am the happiest person in this world when i see the juggernauts of some form of any field go down . It happened today in cricket when Australia went down to England . Yes a team like Australia do not lose often but they do in fact these days !. Aussies had a dream run last Ashes when they thrashed and white washed the Englishmen 5-0 . That was a transition peroid for the Australian team where Aussie greats like warne , mcgrath and gilchrist walked into the sunsets . The aussies always had the ability to produce quality cricketers from their bench after their greats retire . Consider the case of Adam Gilchrist , he took over from Ian Healy and was the most destructive batsman this world had seen .

So coming to the second test at Lords , the englishmen escaped from the blushes to salvage a draw in the first test at Cardiff . But the story was entirely different here , domination was the keyword for the english and they dominated in a way that the aussies had to save the test . But a shocker awaited everybody when Andrew 'FREDDIE' Flintoff anounced his retirement from test cricket and called this will be his last series . He was one of my favourite cricketer and to see a person of his stature was unbelievable some times . Andrew Strauss played a captain`s knock by scoring a century in the first innings and set a good platform . But it was his bowler`s who delivered . The aussies were dismissed when they had 5 runs to save the follow on , but as most captains do these days strauss did not enforce the follow- on and decided that the english will bat again . Almost everybody chipped in and set the Aussies a daunting target of 515 to get , a target which has not been reached before .

The aussies started their chase on day 4 , but lost crucial wickets at regular intervals and were 5 down at lunch . Staring down the barrel Clarke and Haddin played the day out and clarke scored a magnificient century .

But there was no clarke ,haddin show on day 5 the big boy freddie got haddin and the tail was cleaned up not before clarke scored 131 , an innings to remember for long time. But guess who was the hero? Yes it was Flintoff with magical figures of 5-91 who set up a great victory for England . Rightly he was adjudged the Man Of the Match .

This victory makes the Ashes even more interesting series . Will there be a twist in the tale ?

Let us wait and watch