MacGill, Warne demolish World XI in Sydney Super Test

SYDNEY—Leg-spin wizards Stuart MacGill and Shane Warne spun Australia to an easy 210-run victory over the World XI here Monday, raising doubts about the future of best-versus-the-rest cricket series. The Australians wrapped up another conclusive triumph following last week’s 3-0 clean sweep of the one-dayers, ending the match just over an hour after lunch on the fourth day of the scheduled six-day Test.
The two champion tweakers finished with 15 of the 20 wickets — MacGill claiming 5-43 Monday and 9-82 for the match, and world record-holder Warne 3-48 for match analysis of 6-71. The World team of superstars crumbled by the first hour of play Monday, losing their last eight wickets for 88 to be all out for 144, chasing 355 for victory.
Australian Captain Ricky Ponting, who pocketed more than 130,000 US dollars in prize money for the four victories, said he looked forward to better times after the recriminations from losing the Ashes to England last month. “It’s no compensation for losing the Ashes but we’ve started afresh in this series, and it’s extremely satisfying to beat the best players in the world,” Ponting said.
“We’ve set ourselves a standard for the rest of the summer that hopefully we can live up to”. World team coach John Wright dismissed suggestions that his all-stars didn’t put in an effort to win. “There’s no question that anyone went out there to fail — no one does. Not with their reputations,” he said.
“I think form was an issue for some of them. A lot of them came here without a lot of cricket behind them. “We never got an innings going in the one-day series, which perhaps had an effect flowing to this match”. MacGill, who sat unused in the dressing room and watched Australia lose the five-Test Ashes series, grabbed the last three wickets in five balls to claim victory.
He had Daniel Vettori (0) and Steve Harmison (0) out with consecutive deliveries before Muttiah Muralitharan had a rush of blood and jumped down the pitch only to be stumped well out of ground by Adam Gilchrist three balls later. Matthew Hayden, who scored 111 and 77 in the Super Test, was named man of the match, while Gilchrist was announced man of the series.
The World XI finished ingloriously with five ducks in the second innings: skipper Graeme Smith, Inzamam-ul-Haq, Vettori, Harmison and Muralitharan. South African Jacques Kallis, who shared the ICC World Cricketer of the Year award with Andrew Flintoff last week, was top scorer with an unbeaten 39. Warne put the skids under the world team with the key wickets of Brian Lara and Rahul Dravid in consecutive overs after the first hour’s play.
Dravid was snapped up at slip by Hayden for 23 and Warne snared the prized wicket of the West Indian batting great Lara with a fizzing legbreak that took an inside edge to be taken by Gilchrist. The wickets kept tumbling. In the next over Brett Lee trapped Pakistan captain Inzamam-ul-Haq leg before wicket for a two-ball duck — the world losing three wickets in 20 balls. Flintoff perished 12 minutes after lunch when he was caught in the deep by substitute fieldsman Brad Hodge off MacGill for 15, and Mark Boucher was squared up by Warne to be caught by Hayden at slip for 17. It took Warne’s Test wicket tally to 629 in his 129th Test match and gave him 68 Test wickets for the calendar year.
MacGill mopped up the rest, having Vettori caught bat-pad by Ricky Ponting for a duck, Harmison leg before wicket and Muralitharan stumped. International Cricket Council chief Malcolm Speed said afterward that it could be some time before another best against the rest series was held.
“It’s not something we’ll put in on a regular basis, say every two, four or six years,” Speed told reporters. “It’s something that, if a team emerges that justifies being called the clearly the best team in the world, we may take the opportunity to put the rest of the world together and have a team of champions take them on,” he said.—Agencies