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Australia vs West Indies: Wrap from World T20 2014 in Dhaka

29th March, 2014
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Glenn 'Rocks and Diamonds' Maxwell will always bring the surprises. (AAP Image/Mark Dadswell)
Roar Guru
29th March, 2014
6
1790 Reads

It was not quite a virtual quarter-final but when Australia and West Indies met in Dhaka for their World T20 2014 game on Friday, both sides knew that a defeat could send them home earlier than they would have preferred.

Australia had opted to field in the first game for reasons unknown but this time they decided to bat first after winning the toss, and went on to score 8/178 in the allocated overs.

For the second game in a row, it was the long handle of Glenn Maxwell that pushed them forward during the middle of the innings and unlike the previous one, Australia did not fritter away the advantage of that aforementioned foundation.

Australia made 50 from the final five, and seemed to have gotten themselves a defendable target on what looked like a dry pitch.

However, Chris Gayle, Dwayne Bravo and Darren Sammy had other ideas.

A good start from Gayle, a poor middle-overs period and a stunning blast at the end from Bravo and Sammy won the defending champions the game.

Sammy lambasted James Faulkner for a couple of sixes in the last over to win them their second game in the tournament, in turn sparking off some crazy scenes in the West Indian dugout.

So, was that pre-match James Faulkner jibe necessary?
Hindsight is such a wonderful thing. Had Faulkner managed to stave off West Indies in that fateful last over, he would have ended with superb figures in the context of the game.

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He would have probably been lauded for getting under the skins of the West Indian players with his pre-match words.

In fact, despite conceding those two sixes in the last, he ended with figures of 0/27 in 3.4 overs, which, by no means, were extraordinarily poor.

In an innings where the opponents batted at nine an over, giving away just 7.36 might have been match-turning on another day.

Still, I wonder what was asked of Faulkner for him to respond, “I don’t like the West Indians too much.”

On second thoughts, I also wonder what must have transpired between Faulkner and the West Indians for the all-rounder to not like them anyway.

Not for a moment am I suggesting that Faulkner ought to take a leaf out of the Andrew Flintoff book-of-sportsmanship and put his arm around every opponent of his in their defeat, but disliking the West Indian cricket team is stretching it a little too much.

In this heavily-competitive era of the game, West Indies do not come across as a side you could hold too many grudges against, not heard too many experts talk of them as an arrogant or a very abusive set of players.

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Now there are others like David Warner, who had had a word or three to say to their opponents before the start of a game but for now, he’s been able to walk the talk.

Where Warner has also come from has been the confidence he has had in his form, something that saw him top the charts in the Ashes and against South Africa.

Why would Faulkner pick up a bone against a team while still making a comeback to the side following a lengthy layoff because of an injury?

The West Indian captain Sammy made a pertinent point at the post-match conference; you don’t wake a sleeping lion up.

You definitely let sleeping dogs lie.

And the way Gayle had batted in the first two matches of the tournament, it did look like he had dozed off.

Against Bangladesh, he used up 33 balls to score 34. Then India held him tight for 48 balls, allowing him only 48 off them.

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And through most of the time he was at the crease, he gave a sense of being a duck out of water.

He was getting the runs, but he was nowhere close to being at his dangerous best, the type that has carved out 11 T20 centuries in his career to go with 39 other scores of more than 50 in his career.

Faulkner went looking for trouble.

Tonight, he used only 35 balls to get to his half-century and in turn, laid the foundation to what was transpired later in the innings.

The lion was wide, wide awake.

Which brings me to my next question, if this situation was to repeat itself, would Faulkner put up a repeat pre-match showing?

Are Australia a spinner short for the sub-continent?
Of course, there’s Glenn Maxwell, there’s Brad Hodge, there’s Cameron White and there’s an Aaron Finch, who can all bowl.

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But should Australia have vested slightly more faith in their slower bowling resources back home and selected an extra frontline spinner in their squad?

More vitally, should they have played an extra spinner in their starting XI for this game?

Never was it a secret that the tracks in Bangladesh were going to provide a lot of assistance for the slow bowlers.

And quite frankly it came as no surprise that Australia chose to restrain themselves from filling up their team with slow bowling options given the way they have always gone about their business in limited-overs format, in the sub-continent.

Take the 2012 World T20, for instance, which was played in Sri Lanka on similar tracks as these.

Australia played in six games in that competition, and it took them four matches before playing both their spinners, Brad Hogg and Xavier Doherty, in tandem.

In the first four they used up overs from the part-timers to fill up a few as a back up to Hogg.

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And even in that fifth game when Australia did bring in their second spinner, their opponents in that match, Pakistan, bowled 18 overs of spin out of the 20 they sent down – an indicator of how the pitch behaved that night.

While it was understandable for Australia to go into their opener against Pakistan, a sub-continental side, with just one main slow bowler, a second spinner may have made a lot more sense against West Indies.

Tonight, Bailey waited for an eternity before he brought on leg-spinner James Muirhead, probably because he was worried about the presence of the left-handed Chris Gayle at the other end.

Bailey could have brought Brad Hogg on earlier.

The presence of Hogg in the XI could have also been a plus, given that Bailey had himself admitted at the toss that the track looked a lot drier than the previous one against Pakistan.

Food for thought for the management?

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