The West Indies cricket squad lost their opening match of the One-Day Series against Australia by 113 runs at the MCG in Melbourne on Sunday night.
After winning the toss and deciding to field, the Windies bowlers did an excellent job to restrict the Aussies to 256-7. However, the batsmen failed to come to grips with what was required and fell for 143 off 34.2 overs under lights in front a crowd of approximately 24 500.
It was a disappointing start to the five-match series, but skipper Chris Gayle said the team will have to bounce back when the in the second match at the Adelaide Oval on Tuesday evening.
`We`ll bounce back,` Gayle said after the match. `It`s definitely not the kind of start we wanted in this series, but having said that the damage is done so it`s back to square one. We`re looking forward to Adelaide and getting back into the series as quickly as possible.`
The Player-of-the-Match award went to Aussie all-rounder Shane Watson, who made 59 from 74 balls and also took a wicket. He got good help from seamer Ryan Harris and off-spinner Nathan Hauritz who both took three wickets.
The best player for the Windies was all-rounder Kieron Pollard who took career-best figures of 3-45 from 10 overs. He then topsored with 31 off 32 balls and added 64 for the fifth wicket with Lendl Simmons (29).
Pollard picked up the key wickets of skipper Ricky Ponting for 49 and Michael Clarke for 18. He bowled a clever change-up to knock over Ponting`s off-stump. Then he used the crease wisely to run a delivery away from Clarke and had him taken low down to be one of four catches for keeper Denesh Ramdin. In his ninth over and first of the final power-play, Pollard proved he could handle the pressure and pulled off a brilliant solo effort – one-handed return catch low to his right – to send Brad Haddin packing.
Gayle said he was pleased with Pollard`s showing in his first international game since June last year.
`Pollard did a really good job for us and I was pleased with the way he performed especially with the ball. He is maturing as a player. His bowling was great and he started to bat really well, but unfortunately got out at a crucial stage in our innings,` Gayle said.
`A lot of credit must go to our bowlers but the worry today was the batting. The bowlers put us in a really good position, but when we lost three early wickets, that put us on the backfoot, and it is very hard to play catch-up in 50-over cricket.`
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