Grace Road , 11th June - Australia came through their first real “test” of the 2005 Ashes tour with a convincing 95 run victory against Leicester at Grace Road today. - Scorecard | Source 334notout

Scoring at a little over 6.4 runs per over, the Australian batsmen were relentless. Matthew Hayden smashed his first century of the tour with a 107 in just 96 balls. Joining Hayden in the fun were Martyn who added 85 and Andrew Symonds just eight runs short of a quickfire century when the innings closed.

In reply, Leicester never looked like scoring the 322 required for the unlikely victory especially after Brad Hogg's three wicket streak in the middle order. With six wickets down and over 200 runs required it was left to veteran Ottis Gibson to help his side bat the full compliment of overs. Gibson's 50 included three sixes in one Brett Lee over and shared in a 95 run partnership with Paul Nixon.

England's bowlers were also enjoying the party at Hampshire with Darren Gough taking a hat trick; McMillan, Crawley and Benham his victims. A worrying sight for the England selectors was the lack of form showed by the top order who failed in the main match and again in the bonus 12 over game. For the record England won the second game by one wicket with Peterson scoring 46 before he was run out.

Form will surely come for the top order but with the Australian batsmen in such devastating form and McGrath and Lee on the money, they'd better hurry up and find it quickly! The first international of the tour kicks off on Monday, June 13th at the Rose Bowl - the twenty20 competition.

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