Group A: Australia v Scotland
Originally published at The Phoenix Nest. You can comment here or there.
Well, very much a David & Goliath match this, but in this case, David wasn’t up to the task.
Ponting lost the toss, and was put into bat, which ensured that we’d get to see the full potential of the Aussie batsmen. As expected, Gilchrist & Hayden got off to a decent start, putting on 91 for the first wicket. Then Ponting came in, and scored his 23rd ODI ton. Clarke threw away his wicket trying to hammer the ball through the off-side, and an impressive piece of keeping had Hussey out, stumped for 4. Aside form that, the Aussie never looked in particular trouble, and the final score of 341-6 illustrates that. However, credit should be given to the Scottish bowlers, as 341 is a score that Australia are perfectly capable of achieving against some of the best bowling attacks in the world, and if they hadn’t conceded 60+ runs off the last 5 overs, the situation would have been all the better for them, possibly even restricting Australia to under 300.
After the shortened innings break, due to rain, the Scots had their chance to show their batting ability. After a good start, Haq was out attempting a suicidal 3rd run off a mis-field, and aside from a solid 50 for Smith, the rest of the batsmen barely turned up, the end result being that Scotland were bowled out while still 200 runs short of a target no-one expected them to achieve. One other bright spot to the batting was that they managed to last 40 overs, and would have lasted longer still if Blain had been able to come out to bat.
Scotland would have liked to have gotten 150, or possibly even 200 runs, but against the Australian bowling attack, I think they can still be fairly proud of themselves, particularly the bowlers.
Of note for the Aussies was McGrath, with a magnificent 3-14 off 6 overs. 7 more wickets to reach Wasim Akram’s record of 55 World Cup wickets. Ponting is also just 31 runs short of 10000 ODI runs. I expect both milestones to go in this cup.