Australia vs Sri Lanka, 9th Match at Melbourne, , Feb 22 2008 - Match Result

10.10pm The game's off, the rain has worsened, so Australia, as expected, win by 24 runs on the D/L method, grab the bonus point and are through. Thanks for joining us today, come back on Sunday for the next round. Till then, it's goodbye from me.

9.50pm To confirm, Australia get a bonus point if there is no more play. Our Oracle reckons the cut-off is 10.20pm, so half an hour from now. Although I've heard rumours that it may be 10.30[m, nothing's official yet but about a million times less farcical than the World Cup final finish which is just playing across our screens.

"I don't fancy our chances of any more play," Brydon doommongers.

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"Bit hard to transfer to the Dome," says Dave Bags. "A game of footy on there at the moment, with the mighty Bombers battling against the Bulldogs." But we've got all night.

9.45pm Channel Nine are now showing highlights of the World Cup final. The margin here's not that drastic.

9.35pm Regarding the cut-off time, patience my pretties. I'll tell you as soon as someone's told me. Crowd figures meanwhile, there were 27,854 here, which is low for Melbourne on a Friday. Easily half of those must now have left, though. Australia are on for the 24-run win.

9.30pm The covers are still on. "It's just a very misty rain," says Brydon, "but it's not looking great."

9.20pm Andrew McDougal has a solution: "How long would it take to shift all players, officals and fans from MCG to the Dome and vice versa? Shut down the city, get extra trams going and we can do this in one hour tops. Who's against this? Think of the publicity!" See you there.

9.15pm Kunal wants to know: "Why have there been so little boundaries in both innings? It just seems strange." A combination of a slowish pitch but mainly some very nagging bowling from both teams, which has been a feature of this series, not to mention there are a few batsmen struggling on both sides.

9.10pm "Forget the IPL, Gilly, come and play for Cowell" reads a sign. Or Port Adelaide. We're pretty handy, we've got the Australia captain, opening bowler and an England batsman... ah, that's us women. Nevermind.

Long-time reader Bob O'Hara pops up. "In the early days of D/L, it produced some strange targets, so it was pretty useless. I guess then it was known as Duck-Lewis. No?" No. We've had variants on those jokes, too, so 'thanks' to those who wrote in.

9.00pm Woo woo, those three little words every cricket fan is waiting to hear - covers coming off. Gah, but wait, Brydon reckons that's ambitious. "I wonder if the groundstaff have seen the radar, which indicates much heavier rain soon."

And in fact, the covers are being laid down again as we speak. Reminds me of that classic Fawlty Towers "It's up... it's down again" moment.

8.55pm C'mon, someone's gotta have a worse joke than Geoff. Just to clarifying, meanwhile, that if there's no resumption, Australia will win on D/L by 24 runs. Lots of fairweather fans have already deserted the G.

8.45pm Heavy drizzle and now the players come off, the groundstaff come on. Sri Lanka are 25 behind on D/L right now.

Geoff Black deserves to be outed for the poorest 'joke' ever. "Does this mean it's only a Worth-Lewis score seeing as Sri Lanka have a duck already?" Get off the stage.