There are two, one-sided test series going on out there at the moment, and despite them not involving England I’ve been watching quite a lot of action from the games. The first one involves Australia battering Sri Lanka and the second is South Africa making mincemeat out of New Zealand.

Intrigue on how Australia would cope without the three stalwarts Langer, McGrath and Warne didn’t last long as the answer became very clear very quickly – they cope very well indeed! Australia have SO many good players that losing three of them seems to have made very little difference at all. Langer’s replacement Phil Jacques has already been scoring runs for fun, and Brett Lee has taken on the wicket taking mantle from McGrath. Warne’s replacement, Stuart MacGill, has not set the world alight but sometimes you just don’t get the chances in such a team. He’s taken some wickets and definitely looks like he’s taken the mantle of team pie eater.. (hence why the picture in this post shows him!)

Sri Lanka have failed pretty badly with the bat, and they also made a bizarre choice leaving out Malinga in the first test. But they are not at the races, and Murali hasn’t been bamboozling the Aussie batsmen how he sometimes does. It all looks pretty ominous for the rest of the test playing nations when Australia look this good.

South Africa have been the other team playing very well at the moment, although I’ve watched less of this series. Kallis has continued scoring runs for fun, whilst the Kiwi’s bowling looks woefully short of quality, and that was even when Shane Bond was fit in the first game. When he pulled up injured there was very little quality backup and the series never looked like being anything other than a whitewash in favour of the South African’s.

Interestingly enough, both the teams on the wrong end of results in the above two series are the two teams England play against this winter. Although Sri Lanka and New Zealand will obviously be on home turf as opposed to currently being away from home, we should get a good idea of where England are compared to two of the better test playing nations. My thoughts are currently that the Sri Lankan series will be the hardest of the two, but we should look to get at least a drawn series if not a winning one. New Zealand on their showing the past couple of weeks, are a team there for the taking and if we don’t win in the series against them I will be very disappointed. Still, that wouldn’t be anything new for an England fan!