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Day 1: Ambrose departs in fiery charge
Peter Roebuck

CURTLY Ambrose waved to the crowd as he walked on to the field for apparently his last match on Antipodean soil. Seven hours later he was waving again as supporters rose to acknowledge another remarkable performance. The first day of the fifth Test in Perth had not been much of a day for bowling. It was a day of desperate, shimmering heat, a day of melting concrete and parched, leathery tongues searching for relief as temperatures soared to 42.7C degrees or 108.8F on the old dispensation. It was a day sport played in a furnace with cricket providing the background music. And Ambrose took five for 43 in 18 overs as the West Indies dismissed Australia for 243. No wonder he seemed happy.

Not that the domination of the West Indies, renewed by their champion's return, was easily attained. Australia lost early wickets again and fought back with an alert partnership between Mark Waugh and Michael Bevan, two players striving to counter the impression of flightiness.

It took the removal of Mark Waugh to a stirring slip catch to bring about a second tumbling of wickets. Helped a little by fortune the West Indies survived to stumps to finish on 25 for no wicket.

It was a rotten toss for Courtney Walsh to lose because the pitch was as brown and cracked as W H Auden in his dotage. West Indies had chosen a balanced side, naming Phil Simmons as their all-rounder. Walsh had wanted him from the start, and he had started talking about spinners.

A swift breakthrough was required if the visitors were not soon to lie gasping at their opponents mercy. Ambrose obliged with a cutter in his opening over but Matthew Hayden, with legs like pillars, edged to slip.

Worse was to follow as Mark Taylor answered his new partner's call and was run out from cover, Shivnarine Chanderpaul throwing as Jimmy Adams hurried from short leg to break the stumps. Taylor has led his team with nerveless imagination in this series guiding them to a 3-1 lead coming into the final Test. Though he catches flies at slip, he is batting badly and might not survive further failures in South Africa. Australians expect their captains to score runs.

Determined to make amends, Greg Blewett, defending stoutly, found in Mark Waugh an unflustered and skilful partner. Not until Simmons was introduced as a wicket fell, and an off cutter penetrated Blewett's defence. Steve Waugh did not last long as Ambrose followed a snorting bumper with a tempting delivery at which the batsman flashed fatally, Waugh fell carelessly in Adelaide too and has seemed tired from the sustained intensity.

Now began Australia's brightest period as Bevan and Mark Waugh played resourcefully against a gasping attack weakened by Walsh's withdrawal with a hamstring injury. Soon the score was rattling along with 110 runs added between lunch and tea.

By tea Australia were on top. Afterwards though, Ambrose returned and struck again as Waugh was caught in the slips and Ian Healey bowled between bat and pad. Paul Reiffel fell to his first ball, Simmons taking a juggling slip catch at the fifth attempt as Ambrose raised his arms aloft. By now the remaining pacemen were bowling alternative overs from the members end as acting captain Brian Lara tried to keep them fresh.

Shane Warne played doutedly and was surprised to find umpire Peter Willey raising his finger as he glanced. A few blows from Andrew Bichel were all that remained as Bishop took the last three wickets. Bevan was marooned for the second time; he had batted with cool tenacity. Despite his spell in Adelaide, he is not ready to be cast as a bowler. Nevertheless he is becoming a regular.

Day 2: Lara lights up with century
Simon Hughes

A LATE surge by the Australian new-ball bowlers in the last hour here yesterday undid much of the sensible enterprise displayed by Brian Lara for the first time in this series.

Still, the West Indies managed a healthy lead, and their highest total against Australia for four years, but batting last on a rock-hard pitch with huge cracks will be fraught and painful. Digital injuries are just waiting to happen.

Perhaps the reason they have not already occurred is because the West Indians were too exhausted in Saturday's 44C heat to bowl with sustained venom - Ambrose was on the spot but a shadow of the ear, nose and throat specialist we know and fear -and the Australians general length was so short it made Ian Healy leap about more than the batsmen. He'll wake up with serious arm ache today.

The West Indian opening pair remained just until Paul Reiffel and Glenn McGrath had broken sweat (about 10 minutes in this heat) before Sherwin Campbell followed one from McGrath that climbed a touch. Five overs later, the normally discriminating Chanderpaul hooked unwisely at a straight bouncer and top edged to long leg.

With only a sketchy-looking Lara and the insecure Robert Samuels as a buffer against the collapse zone, the continuation of West Indies' terminal decline seemed imminent. Somehow, Samuels survived despite failing to bring a front foot to the crease and resembling an airborne starfish when the ball spat at him. His only shot was a laid-back off-drive when bowlers overpitched.

Lara had introduced the golfer Ernie Els to the West Indies players the night before, but his attempts to tee-off yesterday morning resulted in a sequence of ugly inside edges and the continued presence of three slips and three gullies.

The scoreboard cranked into action once Michael Bevan was introduced, though. As yet, he has not looked particularly threatening to left-handers. Strangely, after five useful overs, Shane Warne was sparsely used.

The Australians grew more and more frustrated and Lara, moved to complain strongly about the sledging after play, poked two metaphorical fingers at the bowlers with a post-lunch assault which brought him 88 in the session.

He clattered Warne for 22 off two overs when he returned and reached his first Test century since the Oval 18 months ago with a satisfying square thump.

Samuels had managed only 51 of their 208-run partnership when Lara edged Warne's top-spinner and departed himself shortly afterwards. It was Warne's 229th Test wicket, taking him past Ray Lindwall to become Australia's fifth highest Test wicket-taker.

Day 3: West Indies have the final word
Simon Hughes

ANOTHER lousy pitch, another three-day finish. The players did their best to prolong the contest by sending down nearly 100 no balls and wides in the match, nine of which came in Curtly Ambrose's final over, likely to be the last he will bowl in Australia.

But lump two teams of loping, accurate fast bowlers together on a strip of fractured concrete and an early finish is inevitable, especially with Australia having already won the series.

Ultimately, the better bowling team won, and though Courtney Walsh and Ambrose had barely one good leg between them, they were predominantly unplayable as the West Indies won by 10 wickets to finish the series 3-2 down.

Whether it was the sub standard surface or the sultry heat that contributed to the players' general ill-humour is hard to say, but the match featured a number of prolonged verbal confrontations, and a general tone of fractiousness.

Twice the officials had to step in when the play became overheated. It was all pretty childish, especially the advent of Brian Lara volunteering to run for the injured last man, Walsh.

Clearly this was designed to bait the Australians in addition to Lara's public complaints about their tactics the previous night when he had accused them of sledging at him and Robert Samuels during their 208-run stand.

Lara first completed his century yesterday before returning to be a runner and the antics then got out of hand. As he ran a quick single, Matthew Hayden accidentally trod on him taking a throw, injuring his ankle. More words were exchanged prompting the umpires to call the two captains into the middle of the wicket and tell them that ``enough was enough''. Walsh and Mark Taylor cordially shook hands after their lecture, but later Taylor described Lara as ``an antagonist, trying to put people off their game''.

The Australians eventually came off laughing at having run out Ambrose in comical circumstances - Ian Healy backflicked the ball on to the stumps from the silly point area as the batsman tried to extricate his bat from a deep crack - but they had conceded a deficit of 141 and Ambrose soon wiped the smile off their faces. He produced a peach for the hapless Taylor and an ankle grabber for Greg Blewett which bowled him.

Ambrose hobbled off after only four overs, obliging Walsh to plough a furrow from one end, or rather aim at one. This he did successfully off a short run, cutting Mark Waugh in half with a vicious breakback then nipping out his brother with one jagging the other way.

Hayden hinted at permanence until shouldering arms to Carl Hooper, and after that it was only the bowlers' overstepping and some top edges from Shane Warne that ensured West Indies batted again.

Glenn McGrath had a wonderfully sustained series performance of 26 wickets, deserving the man of the series award. If there was one for range of expletives he would have won that too.

Overall the Australians deserved their 3-2 win, though the series was strangely lopsided with only two matches lasting much past three days. This was down to poor pitches, indifferent batting, and, after Christmas, the Ambrose-Walsh factor.

Between them they have dismissed more than 200 Australian batsmen. The fearsome pair took a final bow at the end of the match as Taylor bid them an emotive farewell. ``Well done, you've been fantastic bowlers,'' he said at the presentation, ``but speaking personally I'm glad not to be seeing you again.''