MELBOURNE, Australia-MUCH like last year’s Test series, West Indies opened their limited overs tour of Australia yesterday (Feb. 7) in disappointing fashion as they lost the first of five One Day International matches by 113 runs.
West Indies won the toss and chose to field first before the large crowd. While opener Shaun Marsh was dismissed in relatively short order after having added 20, Captain Ricky Ponting and Shane Watson battled on skillfully.
West Indies Captain Chris Gayle finally broke the duo’s momentum in the 26th over when he launched a short delivery against Watson that was misread. The lobbed ball set up an easy catch for Runako Morton at long-on and Watson left the field with 59 from 74 balls.
Kieron Pollard continued to shift the day back in West Indies’ favor when he bowled Ponting one run shy of his half century at the start of the 29th over.
From that point on, the West Indies bowlers struck with vigor led by Pollard, who also picked up wickets from Michael Clarke and Brad Haddin to end the day at 3 for 45.
Ravi Rampaul also put in a good effort, picking up the final two wickets of the side from Michael Hussey and Nathan Hauritz. Australia ended their innings at 256/8, giving a great deal of hope to West Indies fans prior to the chases starting.
The lack of star batsmen such as Shivnarine Chanderpaul, Dwayne Bravo and Ramnaresh Sarwan due to injury certainly showed when West Indies took to the crease, however.
Australia mowed through Gayle, Morton and Travis Dowlin in under five overs to leave West Indies at 12/3 and put immense pressure on the rest of the order to deliver.
Lendl Simmons and Narsingh Deonarine steadied the boat with a 32-run fourth wicket partnership, after which Simmons continued on to an even better 64-run partnership with Pollard, but that was to a great extent the only resistance that Australia encountered as they continue to win in their unbeaten summer.
Pollard top-scored for West Indies with 31 before he was caught out by Hauritz just inside the boundary on a high and long shot. With him dismissed, Australia quickly cleaned up the bottom order and put West Indies down in the series as they were decimated 143/all out from 34.2 overs.
Gayle said that his side would have to bat much better in the remaining four ODIs if they hoped to complete his prediction of a West Indies 4-1 series win.
“A lot of credit must go to our bowlers but the worry today was the batting. The bowlers put us in a really good position, but when we lost three early wickets, that put us on the backfoot, and it is very hard to play catch-up in 50-over cricket,” he stated.
