The television promos for this match
promised a ‘trans-Tasman showdown’ – an exceedingly rare thing in a sport in
which the two countries didn’t play each other between 1946 and 1970 and in
which the Chappell-Hadlee Trophy never quite attained the aura of the Bledisloe
Cup – but the match didn’t really live up to its billing.
The wrestling to the ground of a streaker
by Victoria’s finest just as the Kiwi anthem-singer was belting out the first
phonemes of “E ihoa atua…” turned out, in retrospect, to be one of the more
interesting events of the day. Fifty-over cricket has been polluted by
whack-everything-for-six types like AB de Villiers, but it isn’t much more
exciting when the wickets are tumbling.
There was a bit of that early on; indeed,
Mitchell Starc rocketed one into Brendon McCullum’s off-stump in the first over
to send the quintessential modern batsman back across the ditch for a duck. The
Black Caps probably wished they hadn’t sent themselves in to bat when Martin
Guptill fell for fifteen runs (bowled Maxwell) and Kane Williamson for twelve
(caught and bowled Johnson), leaving the co-hosts 3 for 39 in the thirteenth
over.
It was almost 4 for 66 in the twentieth
when umpire Kumar Dharmasena gave Grant Elliott out leg before wicket off Glen
Maxwell’s bowling, but the Kiwis wisely interpreted the Sri Lankan’s hesitation
in putting his finger up as a good reason to use one of their challenges, and
the third umpire reversed the decision. After being given a lifeline on fifteen
runs, Elliott would go on to anchor the New Zealand innings. He and Ross Taylor
put on a three-figure fourth-wicket partnership, slowly getting the run rate up
and surviving until the thirty-sixth over.
The South African Marais Erasmus did his
thing with the video replay and the Snicko, and found Taylor caught behind off
James Faulkner’s bowling for forty. At 4 for 150, it looked like the men in
black and electric blue might post a decent total after all, but the Tasmanian
bowled Corey Anderson for a silver duck in the same over, and in the next,
Michael Clarke caught Luke Ronchi at first slip off the bowling of Starc,
sending the ex-Western Australian (who was, however, born in New Zealand –
namely in the same town as was Joh Bjelke-Petersen) back to the pavilion for a
fourth-ball duck.
Elliott survived another scare on
seventy-three, Erasmus throwing a disputed leg before wicket decision back to
Dharmasena, and the Australians’ performance in this newfangled thing called a ‘batting
powerplay’ (taking three scalps and restricting the Kiwis to fifteen runs)
augured a walkover. The forty-first over saw Mitchell Johnson bowl Daniel
Vettori, whose batting prowess at the death of an innings had been on display
in the semi-final against the Proteas in Auckland, and when Elliott finally
fell in the next over (after scoring eighty-three runs before misjudging a
lovely delivery from Faulkner and edging it to Brad Haddin), it was all over
for the Black Caps.
The Kiwis’ total of 183, the historically-minded
noted between the innings, was the same as that posted by Kapil Dev’s Indian
team at Lord’s in the 1983 final, when the West Indies underestimated their
opponents and managed to end up all out for 140. But Clarke’s men would be
making no such mistake. There were hiccups along the way: Trent Boult got the
wicket of Big Bash League star Aaron Finch, caught and bowled for a fifth-ball
duck, in the fifth over, and David Warner survived a tenth-over appeal.
Nothing came of these early scares, and Warner
and Steve Smith casually chipped away at the target, taking ones and twos
wherever they could find them. When Warner was dismissed for forty-five in the
thirteenth over (caught Elliott bowled Henry), it left Australia 2 for 63. The
captain would come to the crease in his final one-day international at the last
moment the Black Caps looked to have any sort of a chance.
From there, the match settled into the
regular pattern of fifty-over matches these days – the bowlers not really
trying to take wickets and the batsman not really able to get the ball past the
full-court press along the boundary ropes. Clarke’s was the next wicket to fall
– in the thirty-second over, bowled by Matt Henry for 74. At 3 for 175, Shane
Watson and the still-at-the-crease Smith had little left to do, and the crowd
of ninety-three thousand saw i
gialloverdi stroll to a seven-wicket win with sixteen overs and five balls
to spare.
Faulkner’s performance as what our friends
across the Pacific would call a ‘closer’ earned him the man of the match award;
while Starc was named player of the tournament. Yes, dear readers, after a
tournament in which one-day cricket finally jumped the shark due to the number
of ridiculously high totals and swashbuckling displays of six-hitting, they
gave the player of the tournament award to a bowler. Even after the re-election
of the premier who negotiated with the Lindt Café gunman and the Abbott
government’s threat to remote indigenous communities, perhaps there is still
some justice left in the world.
RIP Phil Hughes and contro il cricket moderno!
