The Cricket blog

Champions humbled..

For the second time in a row, the mightly australians were humbled by the west indies in a thrilling encounter at the Brabourne stadium, mumbai. This is one of the first thrillers of the tournament and i would rate it slightly above the pak-srilanka encounter earlier.West indies batted first and despite being 64-4 at one stage crafted a 234 thanks to a brilliant middle order partnership between Brian lara and morton. The innings was characterised by morton's batting ability and the flamboyancy of lara.Once he set his eyes on the slow paced pitch, it was delight to watch lara cutting, driving and lofting the australian bowlers for a well deserved 71 until Mcgrath got the better of him just after he was lofted over his head for a magnificent boundary.Both morton and Lara batted for a record WI 5th wickpartnership of 137 runs. Australia began shakily and lost 4 wickets with the score a reading a mere 81 on board. Gilchrist and clarke then stuck in and consolidated slowly and steadily with some defiant batting with singles and twos and quick running between the wickets. Gilchrist was runout coming back for a third and that was the beggining of the decline to come(182-5). Talylor then produced a match winning spell at the death to claim a hatrick with the scalps fo hussey,Lee and Hogg to seal the match to its certaintly. Once again, the champions have been undone with a discliplined bowling attack by the west indies. the same team who played so poorly in the earlier match that they were almost written off now have humbled the tournament favorites. Such is the nature of this marvellous game. The tournament just got way more interesting with the possibilities.