NOTTINGHAM: Austr­alia fast bowler Mitchell Starc believes the hard-fought nature of their victory over the West Indies sets the champions up for the defence of their World Cup crown.

The five-time winners appeared to be heading for defeat when they were reduced to 79-5 at Trent Bridge on Thursday following a hostile spell of fast bowling by the West Indies But, with Nathan Coulter-Nile hitting a career-best 92 and Steve Smith making 73, Australia recovered to a competitive 288 all out.

Despite fifties from opener Shai Hope and West Indies captain Jason Holder, West Indies fell 15 runs short in their reply, with Starc taking five for 46.

“We haven’t played awesome cricket in that game, we played well in patches but we can get better,” said man-of-the-match Starc.

“It’s exciting to find new ways to win. Coults [Coulter-Nile] played very well to get us to a competitive total.” He added: “You always have to be confident in those situations, it was touch and go for a while. We always had the belief. There is lots of good bowling in our line-up and we were only a couple of wickets away.”

Left-armer Starc, 29, removed the dangerous Chris Gayle before he could really get going and also took the crucial wickets of Andre Russell and Holder.

Starc was the player-of-the-tournament when Australia won the 2015 World Cup on home soil, taking 22 wickets.

“The experience of four years ago plays a part, but for guys who can bowl at the death we have a lot of options,” added Starc.

West Indies batsman Shai Hope, who made a painstaking 68, admitted the manner of West Indies’ loss was tough to take. “This is going to be a tough pill to swallow having basically been dominating the game for the majority of it and then not being able to cross the line.”

Meanwhile, Carlos Brathwaite said the West Indies were on the wrong end of too much poor as former legend Michael Holding slammed an ‘atrocious’ display by the match officials.

Gayle and Holder were both twice given out on the field but on both sets of occasions, saw their decision to review vindicated by the third umpire.

The mood of the Caribbean side was not helped when umpire Chris Gaffaney missed a Starc no-ball the delivery before the left-arm quick dismissed Gayle for 21.

Had the New Zealand official called a no-ball, the next delivery would have been a free hit from which the veteran opener could not have been dismissed.

“I don’t know if I’ll be fined for saying it but I just think that the umpiring was a bit frustrating,” Brathwaite said. “Even when we were bowling we thought a few balls close to head height were called wides.

“To lose Chris in a chase of 280, who can probably get 180 of them himself obviously, broke the start that we wanted to have.

“But the umpires do their job, they try to do it to the best of their ability, we as players go out there to do our job as well, so there was no confrontation between the players and the umpires.”

Scoreboard

AUSTRALIA:

Batsmen & model of dismissals R B 4s 6s SR

D.A. Warner c Hetmyer b Cottrell 3 8 0 0 37.50
A.J. Finch c Hope b Thomas 6 10 0 0 60.00
U.T. Khawaja c Hope b Russell 13 19 2 0 68.42
S.P.D. Smith c Cottrell b Thomas 73 103 7 0 70.87
G.J. Maxwell c Hope b Cottrell 0 2 0 0 0.00
M.P. Stoinis c Pooran b Holder 19 23 4 0 82.60
A.T. Carey c Hope b Russell 45 55 7 0 81.81
N.M. Coulter-Nile c Holder b Brathwaite 92 60 8 4 153.33
P.J. Cummins c Cottrell b Brathwaite 2 6 0 0 33.33
M.A. Starc c Holder b Brathwaite 8 9 1 0 88.88
A. Zampa not out 0 0 0 0 --

EXTRAS (B-1, LB-1, W-24, NB-1) 27 - - - --

TOTAL (all out, 49 overs) 288 - - - --

FALL OF WKTS: 1-15 (Finch, 2.2 ov), 2-26 (Warner, 3.6 ov), 3-36 (Khawaja, 6.6 ov), 4-38 (Maxwell, 7.4 ov), 5-79 (Stoinis, 16.1 ov), 6-147 (Carey, 30.4 over), 7-249 (Smith, 44.2 ov), 8-268 (Cummins, 46.1 ov), 9-284 (Coulter0nile, 48.2 ov), 10-288 (Starc, 48.6 ov).

BOWLING: Thomas 10-0-63-2 ((1nb, 8w); Cottrell 9-0-56-2 (3w); Russell 8-0-41-2 (5w); Brathwaite 10-0-67-3 (2w); Holder 7-2-28-1; Nurse 5-0-31-0 (2w).

WEST INDIES:

Batsmen & model of dismissals R B 4s 6s SR

C.H. Gayle lbw b Starc 21 17 4 0 123.52
E. Lewis c Smith b Cummins 1 5 0 0 20.00
S.D. Hope c Khawaja b Cummins 68 105 7 0 64.76
N. Pooran c Finch b Zampa 40 36 5 1 111.11
S.O. Hetmyer run out 21 28 3 0 75.00
J.O. Holder c Zampa b Starc 51 57 7 1 89.47
A.D. Russell c Maxwell b Starc 15 11 2 1 136.36
C.R. Brathwaite c Finch b Starc 16 17 1 1 94.11
A.R. Nurse not out 19 18 4 0 105.55
S.S. Cottrell b Starc 1 2 0 0 50.00
O.R. Thomas not out 0 4 0 0 0.00

EXTRAS (LB-9, W-11) 20 - - - --

TOTAL (for nine wkts, 50 overs) 273 - - - --

FALL OF WKTS: 1-7 (Lewis, 1.4 ov), 2-31 (Gayle, 4.5 ov), 3-99 (Pooran, 19.1 ov), 4-149 (Hetmyer, 27.2 ov), 5-190 (Hope, 34,6 ov), 6-216 (Russell, 38.5 ov), 7-252 (Brathwaite, 45.3 ov), 8-252 (Holder, 45.6 ov), 9-256 (Cottrell, 47.3 ov).

BOWLING: Starc 10-1-46-5 (4w); Cummins 10-3-41-2 (3w); Coulter-Nile 10-0-70-0; Maxwell 6-1-31-0; Zampa10-0-58-1; Stoinis 4-0-18-0.

RESULT: Australia won by 15 runs.

UMPIRES: C.B. Gaffaney (New Zealand) and R.S.A. Palliyaguruge (Sri Lanka).

TV UMPIRE: M. Erasmus (South Africa).

MATCH REFEREE: J.J. Crowe (New Zealand).

MAN-OF-THE-MATCH: Nathan Coulter-Nile.

Published in Dawn, June 8th, 2019