Tag T20 World Cup 2010

Winning is a habbit. and cricket Australia has it..

Today, in an insignificant last league game of super 8s round of T20 world cup 2010 as Aussies had already qualified for finals, team from down under decided against trying out bench strength, played same eleven, and won the game quite convinsingly. extending their Twenty20 unbeaten run to eleven.

West Indies watched patiently as Sri Lankans defeated India just 40 minutes earlier on same pitch, making home team's equation for semifinal berth even tougher. Toss came down in Windies favor, and electing to bat first, figures went clear = Windies required a 23 or more run victory in order to better their net run rate than Sri Lanka to qualify for knock-out out stage. sadly, they were knocked out themseleves without much fight in this evening-night match.

Captain Chris Gayle was out 2nd ball of the match after Dirk Nannes bowled a wide and them was hit for a four. Experienced duo of Shivnarine Chanderpual and Ramnaresh Sarwan played some good shots, took calculated risks and Windies looked in hunt for a healthy first innings total but Mitchell Johnson, coming in 3rd change, broke the partnership to trigger windies collapse.

When pacers do the job, spinners become doubly dangerous and that's exactly what happened with Steven Smith to took 3 wickets in middle order to break back of Windies batting. Not known for his sharpe legspinners but top-spining deliveries, Smith utilised 50 over old Beausejour pitch to his advantage, eating up wickets of Narsingh Deonarine, Keiron Pollard and Darren Sammy off the first ball.

9th West Indies wicket fell in 15th over which may have finished home team to an even lower total but Sulieman Benn and Nikita Miller added 20 runs to take their team past hundred run mark.

Australian chase didn't need a flying start but David Warner, in such good form, wasn't prepared to buy his time. 4 fours and a six off just 12 balls he faced, Warner and Watson opening stand fetched 31 from first 3 overs and with that, demolished any hopes for a miracle victory windies fans may have had.

Nikita Miller and Sulieman Benn, the twin left arm orthodox spinners home team were playing, bowled their quota of 8 overs straight through for just 28 runs including a wicket and a runout to give some respectability to local fans who had gathered in numbers at St Lucia venue today. Brad Haddin too his time for his 42 runs, preparing for his semifinal innings against Pakistan at the same ground in 2 days time.

Interestingly, 2 run required for victory, West Indies captain Chris Gayle brought himself up to bowl the 17th over and send down a huge wide, as if to say he's not going to let Aussies score the winning run but finish the game himself!

The scores

West Indies 105 allout in 19 overs
Sarwan 26, S Smith 3/20, D Hussey 2/3
Australia 109 for 4 wkts in 16.2 overs
B Haddin 42, D Warner 25, S Benn 1 for 12
Full scorecard : Aus v WI, World twenty20.