When good performance would be pointless

Well this is regarding the only one day international match between Ireland and Australia which was played yesterday at Dublin. And, needless to be said, Australia did win as expected despite putting a modest of all totals when they lost 9 wickets for a score of just 231 runs on the board. The reasons for the same might be many like, Australia were playing a game away from home though they were facing Ireland who are yet to attain some dignity in international cricket. On the otherhand, Ireland were playing a game under conditions similar to their home nation which is just hundreds of miles away.

However, Australia did win the game though not convincingly when the margin of victory was just 39 runs which is way behind Australia's success in terms of number of runs scored against any strong nation say Pakistan and West Indies offlate. The other reason for Australia to put up such a under rated performance against the Irish would be that they might have underestimated the opposition for which most of the teams have paid the price. And, last but not the least, the match under discussion is totally inconsequential and the performance of Australia does not matter to any extent.

Of course, had Australia lost the match, that would have surely made headlines. But, a win will never ever make one. I bet that hardly anybody would be aware that there was a match held between Australia and Ireland yesterday at Dublin. Australia has got nothing to lose in case they get away with a marginless win for they are not involved in any triangular series to worry about a bonus point nor are they going to face any big opposition for them to carry forward some confidence with this game. But, still, one has to imagine why Australia went into the match with a full fledged team involving Ponting, Watson, Clarke and Bollinger?

In terms of the number of extras conceded, Ireland has an upperhand when the Irish bowlers conceded just 13 of them and with the leg byes and byes being excluded from the list, the number drops down to just 7 as against the 17 extras that included 14 of them in the form of wides and no balls bowled by Australia. This might not mean that the Irish bowlers were more accurate in their bowling as compared to Australia for, the experimenting factor comes into the picture at which the Aussies rank number one in the world. When there is no experimenting, there is little scope for errors but more scope for stagnation.