Twenty20 cricket

As we had been unable to catch the Ashes test at the Adelaide Oval, we thought it would be nice to catch some kind of match whilst we were in Adelaide, and this turned out to be an inter-state Twenty20 match between the (South Australian) West End Redbacks and the Queensland (no sponsorship) Bulls.

One element the Australians have brought into the Twenty20 game this season is the use of nicknames on the backs of the players’ shirts instead of their actual names, presumably to make the whole experience a bit more trendy.

The Redbacks had tried very hard on their nicknames and had come up with some classics - Boof (Darren Lehman), Truck (Fred Kelly), Rhino (Ryan Harris) and Muss (Daniel Harris) to name a few, along with the more obvious Taity (Shaun Tait), Smithy (Mr Smith) and Cos (Mark Cosgrove). However, the Queenslanders had mainly gone for the more obvious choices with Rimmo and Simmo (Rimmington and Simpson) in their team. The notable exceptions were James ‘Catfish’ Hopes and Hannibal, whose actual name now escapes me.

The Redbacks’ victory in the nickname stakes was matched by their performance in the game, as they bowled out the Bulls to gain a fine victory.