Warriors claim title as late collapse gores Bulls
Aided by a spectacular act of self-destruction from their opponents, Western Australia has clinched Australia's interstate one-day title, the Mercantile Mutual Cup, with a sensational forty-five run win over Queensland at the WACA ground in Perth today. In an effort in which Ryan Campbell and Brad Hogg assumed the starring roles, the Warriors set up their win with a sizzling batting display after winning the toss and then capped it by sparking a dramatic batting collapse from the visitors in the shadows of the finishing post.
In many ways, this was a match which confounded meaningful prediction and analysis. It commenced with Western Australia choosing makeshift opener Marcus North to partner Campbell at the top of the order; featured a phenomenal innings from the previously completely out of form Campbell; witnessed an astonishing recovery from a tight spot from the visitors; and then encompassed the late act of suicide which sealed the fate of a hitherto delicately balanced contest.
After the loss of North (0) to Adam Dale in the second over seemed as though it would permit Queensland the chance to wrest the early initiative, the Western Australian batting order simply took over. The dismissal brought Justin Langer (42) to the crease, and he almost immediately seemed to spark his team into action with a slash over second slip for a boundary. From that point onward, the Warriors started to hit out freely and to run well between the wickets, with runs coming at a furious pace from the Bulls' much vaunted attack. In a tribute to the rapidity of their scoring, a drive through the slips for four brought up Western Australia's half century in the ninth over and in a mere thirty-three minutes. The mark of one hundred runs was not long in coming either - only another six overs passing before it was attained.
With an almost equal sprinkling of skill, daring and outright good fortune on his side, it was Campbell (108) who was primarily responsible for this turn of events. He had tallied a pitiful seventy-nine runs from his previous seven innings in this season's competition, but that seemed to count for little as he played with all the confidence and impudence of a man at the very apogee of his powers. The second fastest half century of this year's series, his fifty was raised from only thirty-eight deliveries. His century itself was also achieved in better than even time - only eighty-two balls needed for him to register his maiden interstate one-day ton.
Adding even more lustre to his effort was the fact that he savaged all of Queensland's bowlers at the end of a competition in which it has been rare for any one of them to be beaten. Campbell upset their normally impeccable line and length with his combative mixture of back and front foot strokes, and they seemed powerless to quell the flow of runs. Although they were able to slow the pace to an extent once their rivals had reached the imposing mark of 3/162 by the halfway point, it was symbolic of the game's complexion that the Queenslanders were all the while illustrating signs of losing their nerve with a series of very strange field settings. Of these, the most noticeable was their costly flirtation with the use of a short fine leg - a strategy which was ill applied in view of the regularity with which deliveries were slanted down the leg side. It was in fact only at the very end of an innings in which the score soared to 6/301 - when the full length of Michael Kasprowicz (2/59 off ten overs) and Scott Prestwidge (1/49 off nine) limited the chances for belligerent shots to be played - that the clamps were applied in any sense at all.
With all the look of a team determined to claim every conceivable honour from interstate cricket in Australia this season, Queensland then began the pursuit in possibly even more belligerent fashion. On his twenty-sixth birthday, Maher (102) joined with Martin Love (73) to mount a glorious opening stand that ultimately fell a tantalising one run short of their State's all-time record first wicket partnership against Western Australia in this form of the game.
As a result of an assault which saw their rivals consistently maintain a pace of scoring well in excess of the required rate, the Western Australians themselves suddenly appeared to lose their cool. Errant width and length featured as Maher and Love based their unrelenting march upon the regimen of controlled strokeplay. Other than for the occasional wide, they maintained the philosophy of allowing very few deliveries through to the wicketkeeper and the inevitable result was that the scoreboard kept ticking over with abandon. The timing displayed by both players was superb. It was not until the score had reached 186 that a by now desperate Warriors side finally made its first breakthrough and generated the starting point of the visitors' ignominious downfall. It came in the twenty-seventh over when Love drove a ball from Kade Harvey to wide mid on and into the hands of a gleeful Langer.
Before eventually losing concentration himself, Maher meanwhile put the seal on his tremendous innings by raising his century from the eighty-eighth ball of his stay. To that point, his hand had represented a great riposte, and he had looked in no real bother at any stage. But that was all before a tremendous catch by Campbell (flying high to his left behind the stumps) changed the texture of the game dramatically - Maher's tired prod at a Brad Williams delivery suddenly gifting the Western Australians back the upper hand.
As collapses go, Queensland's was far from the worst in interstate one-day history, but it will certainly have been one of the most shattering. From a position in which the Cup title had seemed well within reach, they completely disintegrated; the combination of ill disciplined strokeplay and some fine bowling and fielding from the locals causing the innings to unravel horribly. Before a crowd which made absolutely no attempt to hide its delight at their fall from grace, the Queenslanders surrendered all ten wickets for seventy runs to be dismissed for 256 and to afford the home team its tenth one-day crown. Indeed, the Bulls were so badly undone by an attack which again relied heavily upon the ability of the ever-consistent Hogg (2/20 off seven overs) to frustrate strokeplay that they even lost five of these scalps for a bare six runs during one particular phase.
