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All so comfortable for Australia

Yesterday, under hot sun in Nagpur and in an atmosphere of anticlimax, Australia made light work of Zimbabwe.

The only alarm for Mark Taylor was losing the toss, for the pitch was dry and would clearly spin, but his team thought nothing of it and coasted to a comfortable eight-wicket win with 14 overs to spare.

The tournament favourites were too professional, too experienced and too classy for the part-timers, who remain bottom of the group and near certain not to qualify for the quarter-finals.

Australia appear to have it all, save perhaps for a really quick bowler to do an Akram or a Garner if things are not to plan, and in Shane Warne they have the jewel in cricket's crown. Warne was given the man of the match award for his four wickets, though in truth he did not bowl as well as he can.

His bowling last Tuesday night in a thrilling match against India in Bombay was good enough to move Eripalli Prasanna, India's finest off-spinner, to superlatives.

There were some superlatives yesterday, notably the wrong 'un to Andy Flower, which knocked the stuffing out of Zimbabwe, and the wicked leg-break - la that ball to Mike Gatting - to Charles Lock, which finished them off. But most of Warne's 91/2 overs were spent having a net, fiddling with this and that and finetuning himself for the bigger fish to come.

One possible problem for Australia is that, so well are the opening pair batting, that the middle-order are not getting a knock. They were off to their usual flier, the captain cutting and leg- glancing, and Mark Waugh clipping through midwicket with his characteristic economy of effort.

Zimbabwe have had a rotten time of this World Cup. They are short on batting without the injured David Houghton and need one experienced bowler to complement the promising talents of Heath Streak and Paul Strang, whose leg-spinners caused Australia some problems and would shine brightly were it not for Warne's brilliance.

Worse still, the best cricketer, Andy Flower, is overstretched in his role as captain, wicketkeeper and opening batsman. He dropped himself down the order for the unconvincing success against Kenya and stuck with it for this game, but weakening a strength at the top of the order to paper a crack in the middle rarely does the trick.

At least there was some belated joy for Andy 'Bundu' Waller, the farmer who answered his country's call at the age of 36 when Houghton was injured.

Pushed up to open and attack, Waller did just so, laying into the seamers with thunderous cover-drives. His excellent 101-ball innings contained 10 boundaries and plenty of good running between the wickets.

Man of the match: SK Warne.