What could Gayle alone do?

Well in the beginning of the 5^th one day match between West Indies and Australia, it was as though Chris Gayle was going to win the game single handed for his team only to be out a couple of balls later owing to a bad shot selection when Gayle hit the ball towards shot cover only to see the safe hands of Clarke after striking two sixes from the first two balls off Bollinger he faced. The only satisfaction for Gayle was that he could take home a strike rate of 200+. And, one cannot blame Gayle for such lackluster performance and a kid's take on the ball, when the entire West Indies team has totally forgotten what winning in cricket is all about.

Australia needed just half of their side to put up a score of 324 on the board and the entire West Indies team put together in addition to the extras could not see them cross the 200 run mark. And this is not the first time that this has been the fate of West Indies cricket. Australia were just wasting their energy by scoring runs and running between wickets and putting up a mammoth total of 324 on board when West Indies could not even think of scoring half the score had there been no extras, powerplays and free hits.

What Australia did was as good as displaying a diamond necklace in front of a beggar thinking he would buy it. There was no need to have someone like James Hopes, Shane Watson, Clarke and others to have taken the ground when lesser known ones like Daniel Christian who could have had a match practice. Or else, it would have been a good chance for the Australian captain Ricky Ponting to have had tail end batsmen like McKay, Bollinger etc who could have done a nightwatchman in one day cricket. It was Ponting who set up a record when he sent in Gillispie as a nightwatchman in a test against Bangladesh who in turn hit a double hundred.

Similarly, one could have seen McKay notching up a hundred and had Ponting himself bowled, he could have had a dream run when he could have had five West Indian batsmen out against his name. Just Kidding! But, one thing that could be seen and is worth highlighting would be the number of fours hit by the Australian batsmen from the top. The series is 1-3-0-3-1-3-10, that contains nothing but ones, threes and zeros which can rarely happen. But, the West Indies' run rate happened to be five all because they restricted themselves only to above 36 overs. This was all that was possible from the West Indies' side.