It was the 1679th ODI in cricket history. It was Australia's 473rd and Zimbabwe's 179th match. It was the 18th meeting between these two sides. The record now reads: Australia 17, Zimbabwe one. This match was the 324th in World Series Cup. Umpires Steve Davis and Simon Taufel officiated in their 23rd and 18th match respectively. Bradley James Haddin (right handed batsman and wicket keeper, born on 23-10-1977) made his ODI debut for Australia. He became the 144th Australian to make an ODI appearance. Australia played without Adam Gilchrist for the first time since 22-05-1997 when he missed the Texaco Trophy match against England at Leeds. Since then he has played in 97 consecutive matches for Australia from 24-05-1997 to 28-01-2001 (v Zimbabwe at Sydney). Gilchrist's sequence is the longest consecutive sequence of ODIs by an Australian. Infact Gilchrist missed the opportunity to become the seventh player to make century of consecutive appearances joining the ranks of India's Sachin Tendulkar (185), Zimbabwean Andy Flower (167-unbeaten), South Africa's Hansie Cronje (162), West Indian Richie Richardson (132), Mohammad Azharuddin (126) and Zimbabwean Alistair Campbell (121). Alistair Campbell (124) scored his sixth hundred in his 155th match. The hundred was also his second against Australia. The other being 102 at Ahmedabad on 03-04-1998. He thus became the second Zimbabwean batsman to score more than one hundred against Australia after Neil Johnson who also has a tally of two hundreds against Australia. The opening wicket partnership of 94 runs between Campbell and Guy Whittall is the highest for Zimbabwe against Australia. This obliterated the previous highest of 55 between GA Patterson and Ali Shah at Nottingham in 1983 World Cup. The partnership is also the best for Zimbabwe for opening wicket in all WSC matches bettering the 50 run-partnership between this same pair also against Australia at Melbourne in the fifth match of current series. Zimbabwe's total (279-6) is its highest against Australia in all matches bettering the 278 for nine it had made at Delhi in 1997-98. It was Zimbabwe's highest total in a WSC match beating the 240 for nine against West Indies at Brisbane in the second match of current series. Zimbabwe's total was also the fourth highest first innings total in a World Series Cup match that was successfully chased by the opponents. The highest losing first innings total in WSC matches is 302 for three made by England against Sri Lanka at Adelaide in 1998-99. Sri Lanka won the match by one wicket with only one ball to spare. Steve Waugh on 22 completed his 2000 runs as Australia's skipper. He was playing his 84th match and 72nd innings. Waugh became the third Australian after Allan Border (4439 runs in 178 matches) and Mark Taylor (2098 runs in 67 matches) and 12th skipper in all ODIs to reach this milestone. The accompanying table lists the leading run scoring captains in ODIs:
Batsman For M I NO Runs HS Ave 100 50 0 SR
A Ranatunga SL 193 183 34 5608 131* 37.64 4 37 14 78.20
M Azharuddin Ind 174 162 29 5239 153* 39.39 4 37 6 78.52
AR Border Aus 178 165 27 4439 127* 32.17 2 27 6 74.55
WJ Cronje SA 138 128 20 4070 94 37.69 - 31 6 79.54
Imran Khan Pak 139 122 29 3247 102* 34.91 1 18 2 73.40
IVA Richards WI 106 92 11 3203 181 39.54 3 23 3 92.41
SR Tendulkar Ind 73 70 5 2454 186* 37.75 6 12 4 83.47
SP Fleming NZ 82 77 9 2112 116* 31.06 2 12 2 68.26
MA Taylor Aus 67 65 1 2098 105 32.78 1 15 2 61.20
ADR Campbell Zim 76 74 8 2075 102 31.44 2 13 3 68.69
SR Waugh Aus 84 72 11 2057 120* 33.72 2 12 8 82.31
RB Richardson WI 87 83 13 2042 122 29.17 2 10 - 63.06
This was also the highest ever total successfully chased by Australia in WSC matches. The previous highest for Australia was 263 for seven it had made against New Zealand at Adelaide in 1997-98. Mark Waugh made his third hundred in 12th match against Zimbabwe and 16th in his career. Mark Waugh has now equalled India's Saurav Ganguly's tally of hundreds. Now only Sachin Tendulkar (27), Saeed Anwar (19) and Desmond Haynes (17) have scored more hundreds in ODIs than Mark Waugh. 