Hard fought Warriors win sets up home final
Fortified by a century from gifted left hander Simon Katich (116), Western Australia has recorded a hard fought twenty-nine run win over South Australia in the teams' Mercantile Mutual Cup semi-final in Perth this afternoon. It is a result which not only guarantees the Warriors passage to the competition's ultimate match next weekend, but ensures that they will meet the winner of tomorrow's second semi-final (between Queensland and New South Wales in Brisbane) at home as well.
Their path to victory was rendered considerably more difficult by a belligerent innings from rival skipper Darren Lehmann (85) in response, but the Warriors were always on top once Katich (116) had guided his team to a score of 7/246 in the opening session.
It has taken a long time for the twenty-four year old Katich to shake off a debilitating virus which he first contracted while on the Australian team's tour of Sri Lanka last September, but he showed few ill effects at all today as he constructed an innings of great poise and maturity. Utilising characteristic economy of movement at the crease, he played within his limitations to dig the Warriors out of severe trouble at first, before plundering all comers to the attack during the latter stages and accelerating the scoring rate with furious abandon. There was nothing particularly brutal about his shot making. Instead, it was a hand spiced with abbreviated drives, glides and glances and executed with a degree of measured application. It was also perfect for circumstances that had seen his team crash to 2/20 and 5/143 at different times.
As is almost the case when these teams meet at the WACA ground, though, this was never a totally one-sided match by any means. In fact, for as long as Lehmann was holding the Redbacks' innings together against an attack led well by Brad Hogg (3/37 off eight overs) and Brad Williams (2/40 from ten), the visitors still appeared to have a huge chance of victory. It is rare at this level that the powerful left hander does not assume a place at the forefront for his team, and it was a tenet in clear evidence again as the task of mounting a satisfactory reply was substantially left to him. During the course of another great fighting innings, he received sound support from Jeff Vaughan (39), but otherwise assistance was not readily forthcoming. Indeed, it was a measure of his centrality to the cause and of how well he had tried to lift his team virtually single-handedly toward triumph that the match's fate was only really decided once he played his first genuinely false stroke. Coming in the form of an abbreviated pull to long leg in the thirty-sixth over off Williams, it made him the sixth man out, and the second of three batsmen to perish in the space of a vital fourteen balls.
The visitors had actually also wrested the advantage earlier in the day and then held it for some time on the back of a fine opening spell from Brett Swain (2/16 from ten overs). The left arm paceman's control was disarming through the opening twenty overs; the combination of his length and his controlled outswing confounding Ryan Campbell (4), Justin Langer (8), Mike Hussey (19) and even Katich himself for a time. There was something of an anticlimactic return to the fray from paceman Jason Gillespie (0/55 off ten) at the other end, but otherwise the Redbacks hardly put a foot out of place initially. Even some errant length and width from the former Australian speedster failed to diminish the effect of excellent captaincy and fielding and generally intelligent bowling from his teammates in warm and breezy conditions.
But it was from there that Katich intervened with such telling effect. After his desire to play shots predominantly through the leg side had initially been thwarted to an extent by the South Australian bowlers' maintenance of a disciplined line around off and middle stump, he played with increasing freedom as his innings progressed. In particular, his placement of the ball behind the wicket on the off side, through the covers, and over mid wicket was superb. That he also seemed to unnerve his opponents into committing a number of basic mistakes in the field through the concluding part of the innings was a tribute in itself to the impact of his man of the match winning display.
