Australia & South Africa Exchange Gifts At Melbourne

Well if one can give a detailed look at the first one day match between Australia and South Africa, it would be just an exchange of gifts between each other at Melbourne. The match can just be called as the opposite of a tug of war, where at both ends, immense efforts are made to end up as the winner. Whereas here, both the teams do equal mistakes, and finally at the end of the game, as per the rule, there has to be one winner, which in this case turns out to be South Africa. Neither was Australia weak and South Africa strong and not even otherwise for that matter.

Both Australia and South Africa were equally benefited by the mistakes that were performed by their opponents. Starting with Australia, they had entered into the competition with an inexperienced squad, with only the skipper Ricky Ponting and Michael Clarke being exceptions. For, they were the only two players who had played well over 100 one day matches in the Australian squad. With such a squad, this Australian team could manage a decent score of 271 at the end of the game. OK..Mike Hussey could be well exempted from this lot, given his temperament with the bat. The rest of them were just there to fill the vacancies.

Imagine how? Not because the Australian team inspite of young players in the squad were hard working or something. This was solely possible because on an average, each Australian was given a life by the South African bowlers that the Australian batsmen made much use of. First of this comes the way Ricky Ponting and David Hussey's run outs were missed by debutant Vaughn van Jaarsveld. Another mis match is the one where the same Vaughn van Jaarsveld dropped two chances off one delivery, wherein he dropped a catch of Ricky Ponting and then misses out on a run out the same delivery.

Other chances for the Australians include Marsh's run out. Then in the South African side, it was nice to see the fall of wickets in their innings, when the score board that at one time read 213/3 at the end of 41st over was found to read 219/6 at the end of 23rd over. A match that South Africa should have won even more convincingly had been won with much hiccups. The South Africans are themselves to blame for this debacle whatsoever. Finally, neither could South Africa make hay out of an inexperienced Australian squad nor could Australia prove to be problems of any sort to the Proteas after a series of missed run outs and drop catches.