Aussies come unstuck as Windies take lead Rick Eyre - 17 April 1999 CricInfo report

Jimmy Adams played a leading role as the West Indies overhauled Australia by five wickets in the third match of the seven-ODI series at Queens Park Oval, Port-of-Spain yesterday. Adams scored 84 to claim man of the match, while Australia have been struck with the news that Glenn McGrath may be out for the rest of the tour with an ankle injury. Shane Warne had one of his worst ODI's with the ball.

A sellout crowd - estimates ranged as high as 35000 - saw Steve Waugh win the toss and elect to bat, McGrath in the eleven for his first match of the series for Australia.

Openers Mark Waugh and Adam Gilchrist made a slow start, especially finding Curtly Ambrose difficult to get away. Only 46 runs were scored in the first fifteen overs. Hooper and Perry proved expensive as the Australian scoring rate accelerated, the 100 opening stand being raised in the 24th over. Eight more runs were added before Gilchrist (43) played a lofted straight drive off Perry, Ambrose taking an excellent running outfield catch.

With so many quick scorers in the Australian batting lineup, Steve Waugh made the baffling decision to send in Shane Lee as pinch-hitter at first drop. Lee scored seven before Perry claimed him lbw. Mark Waugh was run out in the following (31st) over after scoring 74 from 100 deliveries, and Australia were 128 for 3.

Martyn (29) and Lehmann (40) played well to lift the run rate, but Steve Waugh (2) failed yet again. The Australian captain has scored twelve runs so far in this series. Michael Bevan played an average-boosting 29 not out from 22 balls faced, and at the end of their fifty overs Australia were 242 for 7. This was probably twenty runs short of what they would have hoped for, due in no small part to the slow start of the openers. Perry (3/45) and Simmons (2/43) were the wicket-takers, the other two victims falling to run outs.

With the West Indies chasing 243 for victory, Australia suffered a major setback in the second over of the innings, when McGrath turned an ankle when bending down to stop a ball in the outfield. He left the field and took no further part in the match, having bowled just the opening over of the innings. With four matches in the next eight days, it is quite possible that McGrath will go into mothballs now for the World Cup.

Stuart Williams (4) was trapped plumb lbw by Fleming in the fourth overs, but it was all cruise from there. At 59 for 1, WI held a 13-run lead at the fifteen-over mark. Sherwin Campbell, who has been the model of consistency for the home side so far in this series, brought up his 50 from 68 balls, followed shortly afterwards by Adams with exactly the same strike-rate.

Without McGrath, Steve Waugh showed increasing desperation in his bowling attack, Damien Fleming the only other genuine paceman and Shane Warne proving unusually ineffective. It was the eighth bowler of the innings, Darren Lehmann, who made the breakthrough in the 27th over. Campbell charged down the pitch, missed the ball and lost his off stump. Campbell made 64, his lowest score of the series to date being 46.

With Hooper picking up admirably where Campbell left off, Adams advanced his score to 82 before being yorked by Fleming. Amazingly, this was Adams' highest score in 77 one-day international appearances stretching back to December 1992.

Lara came to the crease on the fifth anniversary of his world record 375, nursing a wrist injury, and the loss of Hooper for 56 and Simmons for 9 made the chase more difficult for WI than it had earlier looked. Finally, Lara swung Moody from outside off stump to the mid-wicket boundary, and the home side took the lead in the seven-match series. Lara finished unbeaten on 18. Fleming was the best of the eight Australian bowlers (and Steve Waugh and Michael Bevan did not bowl) with 3/49. Shane Warne conceded 0/59 from his nine overs, one of his worst performances in the gold number 23 shirt.

There were a couple of unfortunate incidents with the crowd after the end of the game. A stump containing a TV stumpcam was snatched out of umpire Steve Bucknor's hands never to be seen again. It is likely that the rest of the series will be televised with one stumpcam instead of two. Mustard gas was also used to quell a small part of the crowd at one stage.

Regardless of these episodes, it will be a highly charged partisan Trinidad crowd who will be spurring the West Indian team on in Game Four later today Sunday. The Australians, with their star bowler probably out for the series and a bowler short in their squad after Adam Dale went home ill, have to regroup quickly if they are not to finish the weekend 3-1 down.