Australia 4 for 301 (Martyn 95, Ponting 78, Clarke 66) beat West Indies 185 (Lara 58, Hogg 5-32) by 116 runs

It was just another day for the Australian cricket team. They got off to a bad start in the first match of the VB Tri-series. Adam Gilchrist fell without taxing the scorers, but then, his teammates put their hands up and took their team to a formidable score. "No sweat", said Ricky Ponting, Michael Clarke and Damien Martyn. Clarke, promoted to the opening slot in place of the 'rested' Hayden, played a superb innings, and Ponting's bat dealt most cruelly with the ball after coming down from the high backlift. Martyn, who brutalized the bowling with the most elegant strokes and played himself into the 90s, compounded the woes of the West Indians.

A target of 302 was made to look like 1000 when Brett Lee decided to vent out his frustrations at missing most of the Tests of the 2004-05 season on the batsmen. In a fiery opening spell, he blew away Chris Gayle, Ramnaresh Sarwan and Xavier Marshall. Wavell Hinds was run out and at 33-4, the match was as good as over. Brian Lara and Shivnarine Chanderpaul then staged a comeback of sorts. But even their experienced heads were not enough to recapture the advantage that the Australian batsmen and Lee had gained for their side. The score was 131-4 when Lara was caught by Symonds off the left-arm chinaman bowler Brad Hogg.

A chinaman, as the experts will tell you, is bowled with the same grip as a leg-break is delivered by a right-arm leg-spinner. The ball turns from the right-handed batsman's off-side to the leg-side, that is, in the same direction as an off-break bowled by a right-handed off-spinner. There are two reasons why bowlers of this type are a rarity in modern cricket;

1. The difficulties involved in controlling wrist-spin (that had made right-arm eg-spin a rarity until Mr. Warne arrived on the scene)
2. The traditional preponderance of right-handed batsmen in the game and their relative ease in playing deliveries that spun 'into' them rather than those that 'went away'.

It has also been observed that orthodox left-arm spinners (those who turn the ball 'away' from the right-handed batsman) are hesitant to include the 'chinaman' as a variation in their repertoire.

All this has given the chinaman bowler, whenever he chooses to turn up, an advantage to cherish; most batsmen are not accustomed to bowling of this type.

Hogg drove the final nails in the West Indian coffin with a spell that would have done Shane Warne, on whom he has modelled his bowling action, proud. He finished with 5-32 and the West Indians were bowled out for 185.

Not even their most devoted supporters will blame the West Indian and Pakistani teams for forgetting about their matches against Australia in the remainder of the tournament and concentrating only on their four games against each other. Why waste time trying to achieve a goal that is unattainable?

Jokes apart, it will take a sustained display of extraordinary cricket from both teams to dislodge the Aussies from their pedestal.