RESULT
4th Test, Melbourne, December 26 - 29, 2000, West Indies tour of Australia
364 & 262/5d
(T:462) 165 & 109

Australia won by 352 runs

Player Of The Match
121* & 20
steve-waugh
Report

Tests and tribulations continue for vanquished West Indians

Fourteen and counting

John Polack
29-Dec-2000
Fourteen and counting. Courtesy of the touring West Indians' continuing ineptitude, Australia has extended its record-breaking streak of consecutive Test wins a level further today by inflicting a whopping 352 run defeat on the visitors in the Fourth Test at the Melbourne Cricket Ground.
Throughout this series, a lack of application with the bat has been the West Indians' most obvious Achilles heel. In crashing to a total of 109 here, they underlined that they are still yet to discover any meaningful way of addressing their collective frailties.
This current Australian side has a ruthless tendency to punish inefficient teams; in the West Indians, it continues to find opponents who more than fit the bill. By contrast, the Australians themselves again looked sharp today, just as might be expected of a group of players with such a repetitive run of success behind it. In a series in which only one of the bowlers they have used has averaged more than thirty, Jason Gillespie (6/40) was the star today with a sizzling display of bowling that helped net him each of the first six wickets to fall in the innings.
"I think we're playing better in every match," said a very pleased Australian captain, Steve Waugh.
"We've got them down and they don't know how to get out of it. They haven't got the experience (in working out how to do that)," he remarked of his opponents' radically contrasting predicament.
"We feel as if we've got a bit of an edge over some of them when they walk out into the middle. In their body language, you can detect that something is not quite right there. But that's understandable."
Following a brief rain delay, the Australians had started the fourth day of the Test requiring another seven wickets for victory. And they were able to reduce that number to six within the first half hour when Sherwin Campbell (6) played down the wrong line at a Gillespie delivery of good length, sending a catch at high speed to Ricky Ponting at first slip at slightly above chest height.
From the very next delivery, West Indian captain Jimmy Adams (0) continued his wretched tour of Australia when he unwisely reached for a Gillespie outswinger without much movement of his feet. Another slips catch was presented; this one heading in the direction of Mark Waugh, stationed one place to Ponting's left.
The South Australian fast bowler was unable to claim the hat-trick but took only another twelve minutes to add to his rapidly swelling haul of victims. Nightwatchman Colin Stuart (4) was the next to go, deceived by a low full toss from Gillespie which crashed into his pads on the line of middle and leg stumps. It was a measure of the complete absence of confidence in the West Indian batting that Stuart had looked as technically correct as, and faced more deliveries than, any other player to that point of the innings. The bowler's figures were 6/18 by this stage.
"We've got a good attack and we're taking our catches. And, once you get a side down in Australia, we generally don't let them get away with it. Mentally, we've got it over the West Indies at the moment. But we're still playing really good cricket and enjoying being out there," said Waugh. Talk about ruthless.
Just to exacerbate the tourists' plight, easily their most resolute player on this visit to Australia, Ridley Jacobs (28), was then the victim of what looked a dubious caught behind decision off the off spin bowling of Colin Miller (3/40). As he pressed half forward at a delivery which bounced high and spun away from him, ball appeared to travel past both bat and gloves and to simply brush Jacobs' shirt instead. But Umpire Simon Taufel upheld the beseeching appeal which was issued after wicketkeeper Adam Gilchrist completed a fine catch on the second attempt.
This ushered in another bad period for West Indies in the lead-up to lunch, Nixon McLean (1) soon run out when he called Marlon Samuels (46) through for a risky single and was beaten home by a direct hit at the striker's end from Andy Bichel at short fine leg.
For as bad as their performance had been again, though, at least some glimmer of hope was raised by the batting of Samuels and Jacobs. At the hopeless scoreline of 6/23, the pair came together with their team only another four wickets away from defeat and still not past the lowest-ever total in Test cricket. Nor even halfway to West Indies' own all-time worst score with the bat in a single Test innings. Jacobs was given a life with his score at eight when Miller grassed a straight forward caught and bowled chance but, for sixty-four minutes, they otherwise achieved a feat which represented something of an impossibility for their teammates. That is, they played positively, skilfully, and looked to place the ball into the many gaps created by a succession of very attacking Australian field settings.
Tailender Mervyn Dillon (15) also showed some stomach for the fight in a stubborn partnership of thirty with the brave Samuels after lunch. But Miller ultimately spun a delivery past his defensive bat thirty-seven minutes beyond the break. Even Samuels soon lost concentration after this, and when he lofted a catch to long on a mere eight minutes later, the formalities were complete. It opened up, naturally, a 4-0 lead in the series; has handed the Australians twelve straight Test victories on home soil; and sets them up to establish their third clean sweep at home in succession.
For the West Indians, meanwhile, the events all assumed a disturbingly familiar tone and left them confronting a major challenge to regather themselves mentally for the Fifth Test, which starts in Sydney in just four days' time. Then again, maybe the fact that there is only that solitary Test still to come in this series might put them in their best frame of mind for some time.

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