Australia thump England to get to finals

The 1st semi-final played between Australia and England looked like an extension of the 7 match ODI series played between the two sides about a month ago. Only that England would have hoped for the final result to be slightly different this time around which wasn’t the case to be. Australia who has gone home empty handed in the last two ICC tournaments looked as good a side as they ever have been on their way to crushing their old foes by 9 wickets.

Chasing a challenging target of 258 in the allotted 50 over, Ricky Ponting’s men got there with more than 8 overs to spare and with 9 wickets in hand. Shane Watson who’d started the tournament with two blobs resurrected himself with a timely unbeaten century and was declared the ‘Man of the Match’.

On a freshly laid wicket that was touted to be a good one to bat on, Andrew Strauss won an important toss and not surprisingly chose to bat first. The England camp suffered a blow with strike bowler Stuart Broad being declared unfit for the game. All-rounder Tim Bresnan took his place in the side that was also affected by the absence of another bowler in the form of Ryan Sidebottom. Right from the moment James Hopes took an outstanding catch to send back the England captain, wickets kept falling at regular intervals and the innings never really gained any momentum. At one stage the score read a poor 101/6 and it only left to Bresnan and Luke Wright to resurrect the innings. The former especially accelerated towards the latter half of the innings to push the team score beyond 250 but the team couldn’t bat out the 50 overs.

Fresh from his success at the ICC awards held last night, Peter Siddle was the most successful Australian bowler with 3 wickets for 55 from his 10 overs. Brett Lee and Shane Watson chipped in with 2 wickets apiece.

The wobble that the world champions had in their earlier game against Pakistan seemed to have an effect on Ponting, who seemed determined to finish off the job himself and not leave it to anyone down the order. After having lost Paine in the 2nd over of their chase, the English would not have any other success thereafter. Watson along with his captain methodically went about their task with Ponting being the aggressor in the early part of their partnership. However it was the Queenslander who launched into an all-out attack towards the end of the chase and eventually ended up hitting 7 maximums in his unbeaten knock of 136. Ponting too remained unconquered on 111 and also reached an important personal milestone; he became only the third batsman [after Sachin Tendulkar and Sanath Jayasuriya] to cross 12,000 ODI runs.

It was a thoroughly professional performance from the defending champions who outplayed England in all three departments of the game and will now have 2 days of rest before they play the final on Monday.