ICC Champions Trophy 2009-10 Points table

[Pak_Army]

Watson, bowlers power Australia to title defence

Australia 206 for 4 (Watson 105*, White 62, Mills 3-27) beat New Zealand 200 for 9 (Guptill 40, Hauritz 3-37, Lee 2-45) by six wickets

They were given a scare in a global final for the first time since the 1996 World Cup but Australia still remain the team to beat on the big day. If Australia were typically aggressive and opportunistic in setting themselves just 201 to chase, they were made to play out of character in the chase against exceptional opening spells from Kyle Mills and Shane Bond, which Shane Watson and Cameron White did with smartness and with determination.

Watson's best innings at international level, a century that earned him the Man-of-the-Match award for the second successive Champions Trophy final, was key to Australia's win. The opening spells of Mills and Bond even overshadowed that of Brett Lee and Peter Siddle. In defence of a meagre total, their lengths were immaculate. The ball that got Ricky Ponting was a perfect example: neither full enough for him to come forward, nor short enough to carry over the stumps, and the inswing trapped him in front. By then Bond had nailed Tim Paine with a full outswinger.

Along with White, Watson went into the Test-match mode, playing out the top two bowlers as if in the first session on a green top under overcast skies. They could afford to do so because of the paltriness of the target, and the absence of Daniel Vettori: he had to pull out at the last minute because of a hamstring injury. White even let go two leg-side half-volleys. Apart from that, there were hardly any scoring opportunities on offer. Except for a couple of awry calls for singles, they survived that period calmly. Starting from the seventh, five overs went for just two runs, and the bowling figures of Mills and Bond then told the story: 6-2-8-1 and 5-2-9-1 respectively.

And then the Aussie mental strength and ruthlessness came to fore. All the other four bowlers were welcomed with boundaries in their first overs. Two of them, against Ian Butler and Jeetan Patel, were deliberate efforts to signal intent; the other two, off James Franklin and Grant Elliott, were gifts down the leg side. Once both the opening bowlers were taken off, Watson turned it on to take the game away from New Zealand. He was lethally good with the horizontal bat, launching two powerful sixes to midwicket, and with the straight bat he mostly went down and along the ground.



From 7 off 28 he motored along to 49 off 72 by the 25th over. During that Watson onslaught, White presented New Zealand with a top-edge that Brendon McCullum, the stand-in captain, got under after having run backwards but dropped. That would have reduced Australia to 41 for 3 in the 18th over.

The momentum wrested, Watson took the back seat, and allowed White get into action. McCullum realised the second string of bowlers wasn't doing him any good, and called Mills and Bond back. Mills gave him another big-hearted effort, taking out White and Michael Hussey, in the process crossing Richard Hadlee's tally of 158 wickets. Both the leading bowlers' quotas were exhausted, and Watson turned it on again, bringing up his hundred and the win with back-to-back sixes.

This final will be remembered for the top-class pace bowling from both sides, on what was a true surface that yielded neither variable bounce nor much seam movement. The way Australia bowled, it seemed we would have the traditional anti-climactic final involving Australia.

All three fast bowlers were fast, accurate and menacing. Nathan Hauritz was canny on a pitch that assisted him, and Watson was stable. New Zealand were never allowed space: the first time their run-rate crossed four an over was at the end of the 43rd over, but they had lost seven wickets by then and had consumed the batting Powerplay. Ponting was proactive in attacking - even during two sizeable partnerships, he set aggressive fields, and brought back all his three strike bowlers in the middle overs to try and get breakthroughs.

A bad start for New Zealand got worse when McCullum fell for a 14-ball duck, which seemed almost inevitable. Right from the off, Lee and Siddle hit the mid-to-high 140s, with Lee getting consistent outswing as well. Three tight overs were enough to frustrate McCullum into cutting a Siddle delivery that was too close to him.

Martin Guptill and Aaron Redmond weathered the storm that the three Aussie fast bowlers worked up, but then Hauritz struck in the middle overs. A 61-run stand was followed by back-to-back strikes from Hauritz, sending back both the batsmen.

Ponting got slips in, and asked Mitchell Johnson and Lee to attack furthermore. Ross Taylor, who twice edged towards slip deliveries from Johnson straightening from a sharp round-the-wicket angle, finally played an impatient shot. Lee produced a vicious inswinging yorker to get rid of Elliott.

It then became a matter of surviving the 50 overs, and Australia never let up the pressure, despite the batting Powerplay that yielded 40 runs.

[NeWs_ChAnNeL]

Pakistan through to semis after beating India               

CENTURION: Shoaib Malikand Mohammad Yousuf shared a record fourth-wicket stand to help Pakistan beat India by 54 runs on Saturday to reach the Champions Trophy semi-finals.
Pakistan compiled 302 for nine after winning the toss and batting before restricting their arch rivals to 248 all out.
The victory led Pakistan to the top of Group A with four points from two matches ahead of Australia on two. India and West Indies have no points.
Shoaib (128) and Yousuf (87) put on 206 in 193 balls, the biggest stand for any wicket in the Champions Trophy and a fourth-wicket record for Pakistan.
The previous record in the competition was 192 for the first wicket, shared by Indians Virender Sehwag and Saurav Ganguly against England in Colombo in 2002 and Chris Gayle and Wavell Hinds for West Indies against Bangladesh in Southampton in 2004.
Pakistan's previous best for the fourth wicket was an unbroken stand of 198 between Kamran Akmal and Misbah ul-Haq against Australia in Abu Dhabi earlier this year.
Shoaib cracked 128 in 126 deliveries, with 16 fours, to record his seventh ODI century. The 27-year-old really hit form in the latter stages of his innings, needing just 27 deliveries for his second 50.
Yousuf's 87 featured seven fours in a classy display of wristy stroke making.
Left-arm seamer Ashish Nehra struck twice with the new ball for India and finished with four for 55.
However he had little support, with only Ishant Sharma pegging back the Pakistan batsmen with two for 39.
Rahul Dravid top-scored for India with 76 before being runout in the 42nd over, Umar Gul's fine throw from the cover boundary beating him after Harbhajan Singh had called for a third run.
India were given a powerful start by Gautam Gambhir, who lashed 57 off 46 balls, while Suresh Raina added 46 in 41deliveries.
Pakistan, though, eventually cruised to victory after claiming the last five wickets for 43 runs.
Naved ul-Hasan, Shahid Afridi and Saeed Ajmal all picked up two wickets.
Seventeen-year-old fast bowler Mohammad Aamer also grabbed two for 46 including Sachin Tendulkar for eight.

[The Rude Boy !!!!!!!]

England defy Smith to reach semis

England's bowlers held their nerve in the face of a supremely gutsy 141 from their habitual nemesis, Graeme Smith, to steer their side into the Champions Trophy semi-final with a game to spare, thanks to a thrilling 22-run victory over the hosts, South Africa, at Centurion. Chasing a hefty 324 after a pair of exceptional innings from Owais Shah and Eoin Morgan, Smith forced England to battle every step of the way, and at 206 for 3 with 14 overs to go, a crushing reversal was not out of the question. However, James Anderson put the game safe with the nerveless figures of 3 for 42 in ten overs, and when Smith himself was ninth man out with 19 balls remaining, South Africa had to face up once more to the ignominy of exiting a global tournament on home soil at the very first hurdle.