The Liebke Ratings: West Indies vs Australia ODI tri-series final

And so it came to pass, as alarms went off at 3am and Australians struggled bleary-eyed out of bed and turned on their televisions, radios or live blogs, that the tri-series came down to one final match. The final between the West Indies and Australia.

Here are the ratings for that final.

Matthew Wade’s destiny
Grade: B-

After the Australian top order all made a start but failed to do much more than that (exception: Glenn Maxwell, who doesn’t believe in making starts if he’s not going to go on with it), Matthew Wade arrived at the crease with the score on 5-156 after 31 overs.

Wade immediately began playing a series of pre-meditated sweep shots to the West Indies spinners. Is it possible to play an entirely pre-meditated innings? A pre-meditated career? If so, that’s what Wade did.

Wade went on to fulfil his destiny of being the only Australian batsman to make a half-century as he rallied the innings and combined with the tail to guide Australia to a far-fetched total of 270.

Josh Hazlewood’s batting
Grade: A

Josh Hazlewood once again proved undismissable in the 50-over form of the game. He’s now played 24 ODIs without ever being out. Is he the greatest one-day batsman of all time? You’d have to imagine he is.

Oh, sure. It could be pointed out that Hazlewood didn’t face a ball, merely standing at the non-striker’s end for the last two balls of the innings, but that overlooks the fact that Adam Zampa was run out at the non-striker’s end, a fate that Hazlewood – the superior batsman – avoided with the guile and skill we’ve come to expect from him.

Zampa was run out by the bowler after backing up too far. It was essentially a mankad, although an unusual one in that instead of taking place at the end of the bowler’s run-up, the ball was instead delivered and then followed by a Wade return straight drive.

Let’s call it half a mankad. A hobbitkad, if you will.

Mitchell Marsh’s bowling
Grade: B+

In Australia’s previous match, Mitchell Marsh had provided the steady yin to Maxwell’s frenetic yang as the pair got Australia home in a tricky run chase. Marsh’s cool head inspired stand-in coach Justin Langer to suggest that he (Marsh) could bat at four for Australia in all forms of the game.

Langer obviously needs to calm down a little bit, but the underlying nub of his gist has a point. Marsh is becoming a useful cog in the Australian team.

In this match, he also shone with the ball, taking 3-7 off his first six overs to stifle the West Indies’ run chase after a solid opening stand of 49.

Obviously, then, we can look forward to Marsh opening the bowling for Australia in the first Test against Sri Lanka.

Josh Hazlewood’s bowling
Grade: B+

After Marsh had reduced the West Indies to 4-72 in the 21st over, the match more or less petered out, with the Windies unable to muster the partnerships required to seriously threaten the target.

There were a few attempts to liven up proceedings, Mitchell Starc amusingly lost the ball in the lights while fielding on the boundary, conceding both a boundary and his dignity in the process.

Carlos Brathwaite briefly did his six-hitting thing before his exit dashed all West Indian hopes. (Is there some kind of portmanteau we can use for a ‘Brathwaite exit’ that triggers a crisis? There must be one. Let’s workshop this, people.)

And somewhere in there, Hazlewood surreptitiously took five wickets and positioned himself as Australia’s premier limited-overs all-rounder.

The Ballr Cup powered by Cycle Pure Agarbathies
Grade: B-

And so Australia won the match by 58 runs, adding yet another trophy to their bulging cabinet. Why Cricket Australia doesn’t loosen the purse strings and simply buy a bigger cabinet, I’ll never understand.

When the West Indies decided to hold a tri-series featuring the teams ranked 1, 3 and 8 in the world as a baffling tribute to Mark Waugh’s Test debut score of 138, many fans said it would never work.

How wrong they were! The Ballr Cup powered by Cycle Pure Agarbathies contained everything cricket devotees could hope for in an ODI tri-series.

Fast pitches. Slow pitches. Stationary pitches. Shared points. Bonus points. Double bonus points. Mitchell Starc bowling. Mitchell Starc batting. Mitchell Starc resting. Shoulder injuries. Finger injuries. Groin injuries. The dropping of Glenn Maxwell. The triumphant return of Glenn Maxwell. The unforeseen return of Scott Boland. The absence of Hot Spot. The absence of Snicko. The absence of South Africa in the finals.

It’s a series that will live long in the memory. Assuming, of course, that your memory is some kind of optimised cricket database on a securely backed up SSD hard drive.