Blues prevail in run orgy

Spare a thought for Shane Lee and Ricky Ponting.

In 32 years of domestic one-day competition in Australia, no team had surpassed the total of 325 with the bat. In the space of seven hours, that mark was shattered twice - against the New South Wales and Tasmanian attacks that they respectively captained in the ING Cup match between the teams here at the Bankstown Oval in Sydney.

Ponting's headaches - and those of his team as it fell to a 35 run loss under the Duckworth/Lewis method - had their origins at the toss. That was when rival leader Lee was presented with the chance to give the home side first use of a pitch flatter than any of the pancakes being served at the shopping mall just a street away from this ground.

Albeit that new ball bowlers Damien Wright (0/79) and David Saker (1/61) limited the Blues to as few as 14 runs from the first five overs, matters did not improve for the visitors at any stage during the opening session.

Once Saker's line deserted him sufficiently to permit 12 runs to be clobbered from the sixth over of the innings, the attack was subjected to a fearful hammering at the hands of New South Wales openers Mark Waugh (123) and Brad Haddin (120).

That not only put into the shade the fact that Tasmania conceded fewer runs than any other state in this competition last season. It also caused wholesale shredding of a number of pages in the record books, not the least of them the one that shows the highest totals ever made in this form of the game in Australia.

In ascending to the Himalayan score of 4/397, the Blues shattered, by an unthinkable 72 run margin, the previous best of 325 - a total made by both South Australia in the 1986/87 Final, and Western Australia in a preliminary round match last season.

Along the way, Haddin also equalled Stuart Law's mark for the fastest one-day century in interstate cricket, reaching his landmark after a mere 74 balls. And, in raising an outrageous opening stand of 228 in less than 29 overs, he and Waugh went a long way toward completely demoralising the entirety of the visiting team.

Between the fifth and fifteenth overs, as many as 102 runs were plundered. Another 50 came between the eighteenth and twenty-second.

"We've got to find better ways of bowling defensively," lamented Ponting.

"It was a hard job being out there today and trying to set fields and make bowling changes when we were being slapped all over the park. Almost every bowling change I made didn't work and every fielding change I made didn't work either. A score of 397 is quite obviously a lot too many (to concede)."

By this point, the Space Shuttle was looking about the only object capable of being launched into orbit more consistently. Even good deliveries were rarely treated with respect; bad ones were routinely and gloriously punished.

And then the run rate only accelerated when Michael Bevan (68*) and Lee (42*) himself joined forces during the closing overs.

"I looked across the dressing room at one stage and there were three or four blokes with the pads on. Everyone was pretty keen to get out there," quipped Lee in reference to the veritable batting paradise that doubled as the pitch.

"We were looking to beat them - and to beat them well today. We wanted to put them on the back foot."

To their credit, Tasmania's batsmen did not hoist the white flag. Instead, they offered the Blues' bowlers a similar level of punishment to what had come before. Openers Michael DiVenuto (52) and Shane Watson (51) smashed 85 runs from the first 11 overs of the afternoon session to renew the pattern of all-out aggression, even to the point of forcing a shellshocked Glenn McGrath (0/40) to be removed quickly from the attack.

Around a bucketing late shower of rain that reduced Tasmania's innings to a maximum 47 overs, Daniel Marsh (101*) then clubbed a fine century to prolong the assault. Graeme Cunningham (46) and Jamie Cox (31) also chimed in well, ensuring that New South Wales did not even claim the bonus point that many of the 3183 spectators here might have taken for granted at the match's halfway point.

The Tigers therefore refused to leave without reshaping some records of their own: their total of 7/327 produced the state's highest ever tally in a one-day match and also permitted them to establish a new high mark for any team batting second in the competition's history.

In hindsight, a 15 minute period - during which part-time spinner Michael Clarke (3/57) and paceman Stuart Clark (1/44) removed DiVenuto, Ponting (7) and Shaun Young (1) in quick succession - proved crucial in determining the fate of the match.

Longer innings from Ponting and Young, each out to wasteful strokes, might well have set Tasmania on the way to the unlikeliest of wins.

For lovers of dazzling strokeplay, this was Nirvana. For those who appreciate the art of containment, it was a full-scale disaster.