Australia pull fast one with go-slow
By Matthew Engel
Mon 31 May 1999 22.04 BST First published on Mon 31 May 1999 22.04 BST
The day England disappeared from the World Cup also turned out to be the day the tournament disappeared up its own rear end. Some have thought the complexities of the qualification system unfathomable. Yesterday the Australians fathomed them, and the result was a dreadful and shameful game of cricket.
Australia are now in the Super Six, and they may well have taken the West Indians with them - at the expense of New Zealand. The problem was that once it was clear Australia were bound to win, it suited both teams for them to do so as slowly as possible. The Aussies had to win inside 47.2 overs to go through. They were always likely to do this after they had bowled West Indies out for 110 and got within 19 of victory with almost half their overs left. Then they stamped on the brakes. The game maundered on for another 13 overs, with neither team trying to end it.
Australia wanted to stop New Zealand, not out of some atavistic bit of regional hatred (though there's a bit of spikiness there) but because of the peculiar workings of the Super Six. A few days ago the consensus was that the system being used in this tournament was all rather elegant; its downside has now been exposed. Remember that teams who qualify carry through results against the opponents who go through with them. Because Australia beat West Indies but lost to New Zealand they want the team they beat to qualify. Got that?
This event being in the Information Stone Age, most spectators won't have done. As you would expect, Steve Waugh did. Ruthlessly, heedlessly, he and Michael Bevan drove almost half the crowd towards the exits and sent the rest into chants of "boring". Later, both he and Brian Lara admitted trying to use the rules to their advantage but they denied collusion - angrily, in Lara's case. Steve Rixon, the New Zealand coach, said he would have done the same in Waugh's shoes. But he is an Aussie, after all.
Rixon's men are now faced with a fiendish set of calculations affecting their game against Scotland today. The point of the tactics at Old Trafford was to make their task as hard as possible by improving West Indies' overall differential. New Zealand probably now have to win by something between 110 and 120 runs if they bat first, and to get their runs in less than 25 overs if they bat second.
It's not quite as simple as that, but life is short. This is nothing to do with Messrs Duckworth and Lewis but something to do with Messrs Net and Runrate. As if cricket wasn't complicated enough. The football World Cup realised years ago that the last matches of qualification groups need to be played simultaneously. The most amusing outcome will be West Indies getting through, striking form and stuffing Australia in the semi-final.
It's hard to imagine that, though. The poor devils who paid to watch this (forgoing Manchester City) got freezing cold and no apologies. They did see Australia's best bowling performance of the tournament. Glenn McGrath, who had chafed as first change, was handed the new ball again and used it to devastating effect, culminating in a ball that jagged sharply to bowl Lara for nine.
Shane Warne was also something closer to his old self. Bowling from the end that produced The Ball (the one that bowled Mike Gatting here in 1993), he even found one of his flippers, which have been elusive of late, to get Reon King.
As batsmen came and went, Ridley Jacobs stood at the other end and became the first player ever to carry his bat in the World Cup. Jacobs is becoming the anchor of the rickety West Indian ship. He did not attempt to compromise his position by attempting anything reckless, like scoring runs.
The West Indian rate was barely above two an over, and it was not wholly clear where uselessness ended and manipulation began. There was no particular advantage in their batsmen staying out there for the sake of it so theirs was probably just wretched batting. Oh, those carefree Caribbean strokemakers!
The undoubted deliberate blocking came later. Call it immorality if you like, or call it professionalism, but don't call it cricket.