|
Gilchrist blitz seals Super Series
10/8/2005
MELBOURNE, Australia, Oct 7 (AFP): Australia romped to victory in the ICC Super Series on the back of Adam Gilchrist's fastest one-day century by an Australian and an unfulfilled World XI batting challenge in the second one-dayer here Friday.
Australia backed up their crushing 93-run win in Wednesday's opening game with a 55-run win over the world all-stars to clinch the best-of-three match series with the final game to play on Sunday.
Man-of-the-match Gilchrist smashed a 79-ball 103 in Australia's imposing 328 for four and they weathered an explosive start by the world all-stars before dismissing them for 273 off 45.3 overs to cruise to victory.
"It's all about the start we get for the team and fortunately Kato (Simon Katich) and I managed to do a good job there and get a couple of good launching pads in the two games and the guys then came in today and really cashed in on that," Gilchrist said of his century opening stand.
Skipper Ricky Ponting said he had to ask a lot of his bowlers, missing rested Glenn McGrath, to change the world team's early scoring momentum.
"We had to do things a bit differently in our bowling innings today, they got off to an unbelievably good start, Chris Gayle and Virender Sehwag were knocking us all over the place and we had to change the momentum of the game," Ponting said.
"We knew once we got a wicket or two the run-rate would slow down and that's the way it turned out."
Gilchrist claimed his 12th one-day century in 73 balls in the officially-sanctioned ODI, cracking eight fours and four sixes to eclipse the mark of 78 that Gilchrist had shared with former captain Allan Border.
The world team early appeared well on target in the run chase with Sehwag, Gayle and Kumar Sangakkara taking to the largely-inexperienced Australian attack.
Sehwag smashed four boundaries in his 15-ball 21, West Indian Gayle, who replaced Muttiah Muralitharan as super sub, clobbered 54 in 48 balls with eight fours and a six.
Gayle and Sangakkara hammered 98 runs for the second wicket off 75 balls before Gayle swooshed outside off-stump at Shane Watson and was caught by Gilchrist.
Sangakkara, who topscored with 64 in the first match, was run out for 61 off 44 balls in a mix-up with Jacques Kallis in the 20th over and from there it was all downhill for the world team.
"We were really on track with the run-rate and I think those two run-outs (Sangakkara and Kallis) really did us, maybe you get that from not playing enough together," Pollock said.
|