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.

Ponting's yet another immaturity

Well what would have Australia lost if not for the match against New Zealand in the finals ODI of the bilateral series when the series has been pocketed by them a couple of days ago? Aussies made the most of it when they seriously had to win though they lost the first encounter which would have seen them go 1 down in the series. However, that was the match where both the teams fought in a very tight manner and as the convention goes, there could be only one winner and that happened to be New Zealand. And, then onwards, it has been the Aussie show until they sealed the series against their name.

And, there should be absolutely no reason for New Zealand to rejoice their victory in the 5^th one dayer played at Wellington despite winning the match be a rather decent margin of 51 runs. This can be considered as Australia's loss and not a win by New Zealand for it was not New Zealand who fought for it. The match was gifted by Australia to New Zealand for which New Zealand has to be thankful to their Tasmanian rivals. However, things didn't start as though New Zealand would win the match when they lost 4 wickets for a score less than 100 on the board.

The score was 25 by the time the 2nd wicket had fallen and scorecard suggests that the New Zealand openers - Brendon McCullum and Martin Guptill had scores of 1 and 7 respectively. New Zealand could score a total which was only somewhere near to the total that they could manage in their earlier games. In the 4th ODI at Auckland, they ended up scoring 238 runs and in the 3rd ODI at Hamilton, they were found to score just 245 runs compared to the 241 they put up in the last one dayer which they appeared to win convincingly.

One has to wonder as to how come New Zealand could manage to defend a similar total in the inconsequential match at Wellington when they could not even come close to doing the same in the previous one dayers at Hamilton and Auckland respectively. And, the way Australia played was just another instance of a captain's immaturity when Ponting went into the fifth ODI with a full strength Australian team when he could have rested some senior players like Watson & Johnson and instead played some lesser talent like Bailey. Neither did Ponting go in for a whitewash nor did he give some lesser talent a little bit of match practice.