BASSETERRE (St Kitts), July 7: Michael Clarke is thrilled that Australia were able to complete a rare One-day International series sweep over West Indies in the Caribbean.

Australia crushed West Indies by 169 runs on Sunday at Warner Park, following a strong batting performance and Mitchell Johnson’s second five-wicket haul in ODIs to take the series 5-0.

Australia won the opening match by 84 runs in St. Vincent, the rain-affected second ODI by 63 runs under the Duckworth-Lewis Method, and the third ODI last Sunday by seven wickets in Grenada, as well as the fourth ODI last Friday by one run here.

Sunday’s victory — Australia’s largest against West Indies — also meant they became only the third team to sweep an ODI series in the Caribbean.

Previously, South Africa and Pakistan were the two sides that achieved ODI series sweeps in the Caribbean.

They both accomplished the feat three years ago, when the Proteas won all five of their matches in a bilateral series, and the Pakistanis won all three in theirs.

“I think for the whole team it is a great feeling,” Clarke said. “We have a achieved the goal that we set before the start of the tour.

“We have played some brilliant cricket. We had some closer moments than we would have liked. But it has been a fantastic series, and I think full credit must go to the whole squad for the effort they have put in.

“It’s good to know that there is still so much strength in the Australian team, despite the recent string of departures through retirement.”Clarke observed it was also vital for Australia to play strongly throughout the series, since they had dropped their guard in previous series once they had been decided which was a point regular captain Ricky Ponting stressed before he returned home on Friday with a damaged wrist.

“This was not the feeling we wanted at the end of the series - playing great for three matches and the last thing we did not want to do is play like we didn’t care in the last two,” Clarke said.

“Punter (as Ponting is known) made it clear before he left that he wanted us to continue playing good cricket, and make sure we won 5-0, and I think he would be impressed with the way we played.

Clarke felt the performance of his side emphasised that they were still the No.1 side in the World.

“And hopefully, we will be for a long,” he said. “Our goal was to win 5-0, and we did not want anything to stand in our way. There were a few times we may have let ourselves down a little bit, but we discussed them, and made an effort to correct them.”West Indies coach John Dyson acknowledged the result of the series was a surprise to him.

“I expected this ODI series to be more closely fought,” Dyson said. “If everything went in our favour and fell into place, we might have walked away with a 3-2 win. I was expecting it to be 3-2 scoreline or at worst 4-1. I did not expect to be beaten 5-0.”Dyson also indicated that the series has emphasised that the players must understand that they need to change their approach to the game to be more competitive.

He noted that he had tried to make the players understand that they had to curb playing the game “the West Indies way” to achive greater success.

“We have to accept that we need to change our approach to various things,”he said.

“The potential is there. We have some very talented players, but to compete with teams at the top of the table, there are some changes that they need to accept they need to make to their game.

“For example, teams like Australia build pressure by bowling large sets of dot balls and make it very difficult to score. I’ve been told since South Africa that ‘the West Indian way’ is not to do this. We’re aggressive. We try and get people out.“That’s fine, but you see the results of that - we have some good days and we have some shockers. Hopefully after this series the players will sit back, reflect on that and accept that there are things that need changing.”—AFP