The Kiwi A team did pretty well by beating the Aussie A team in a one dayer yesterday.

Great performances from Graeme Aldridge, Mark Gillespie, Jamie How and Michael Papps. The victory came in spite of a big hundred from Brad Hodge and other stars such as Phil Jaques being in the Aussie team.

Where did you find details of this tournement? I've been looking for this somewhere on cricinfo and the ACB but no joy.

Another plus point is that all the Aussie second stringers playing county cricket have been replaced by NZ first side players . . .

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never believe anything until it is officially denied . . .

Mr Kiwi, you can find the tournament details here. A scorecard of the last match is here. To find articles about the match, type "brad hodge" in google and search in Google News.

www.cricket.com.au is the official Aussie cricket site, and it has the full details of all the matches and on some of the games, there's ball by ball commentary.

Here's the results so far:

NZ 'A' 239/2 beat Aus 'A' 236/4
Ind 'A' 313/3 beat Pak 'A' 183
NZ 'A' 344 beat NT XI 177
Ind 'A' 216/6 beat Aus 'A' 213
These were 50 over games.

The following 20/20 game was played yesterday:
Pakistan 'A' 164 beat NZ 'A' 164 all out after 16.4 overs. Test discard Misbah-ul-Haq scoring a brilliant century.

Tomorrow the first of the 4-day games start, with Australia 'A' taking on Pakistan 'A'

The other game is between India and New Zealand.

India is the only unbeaten team in this Top-End tournament so far.

Try this link, Cricinfo have only just got round to following the series in the last few days.

Shane Watson 161 not out with 129 from Brad Haddin putting on 268 for the 5th wicket along with half centuries from Jaques, Cosgrove and a 50 not out to tailender Johnson. Australia 510/6 dec. Pakistan A led by Mohammad Hafeez with 108 not out and Pakistan A are in a great possition at 1/212 after 56 overs.


New Zealand A Vs India A, Craig McMillian with a century to his name with Papps and Sinclair both making half centuries. Young Gun legspinner Piyush Chawla taking a 5 for 86 off 40 overs, India came out and had an early colapse but now are in a competative position 6/209 chancing 332 with a half century to Badrinath and currently Sharma and Singh are both on 41 not out so the game could swing either way.

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Bill Ponsford - The only one who could play in Bradman’s company and make it a duet.

Seems more likely that there's going to be a result in that game, than the one Aus vs Pakistan. Both teams nothced up huge first innings scores and with Pakistan stil batting late into DAy 3, a draw is on the cards.

Good batting practice though for both teams, and that's the whole idea behind the excercise, isn't it?

To be fair, if I were a bowler in the series and I was told the whole point of the series was to get batting practise, I'd be a little demoralised! Perhaps we should tell all the bowlers this, it might motivate them to take more wickets and generally make a game of it.

Otherwise the series could end up being one where tactical nous is only required, just to declare at the right time.

Actually, just looking at Darwin's stats on Statsguru... it's not really a batsman's ground at Test level anyway. The average innings for the ground is about 180, and that's only boosted by Australia's 407/7d v Bangladesh. Maybe the bowler's might find it tough there anyway!

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"Being second is to be the first of the ones who lose."
- Ayrton Senna

India-A came back from first innings deficit to 3 wicket victory in the 4 day match against Newzealand-A
It was tremendous performance by the bowlers especially R.P.Singh and Piyush Chawla and good experienced batting from Badrinath in the second innings
overall it was satisfying victory against a side which has got good number of internationally experienced players like kiwis had
Australia A vs Pakistan A match was drawn

On a pitch where Australia A batsmen scored 461/4, the India A batsmen are struggling. What could be the reason? Is it a sign of things to come for world cricket where Australia will again dominate for next decade?