Blues race to resounding win

New South Wales has scored a resounding seven wicket win over Tasmania with more than thirteen overs to spare in a rain-reduced Mercantile Mutual Cup match at the Bellerive Oval in Hobart today. A win which gave the Blues a second bonus point under the newly-revised rules in the Cup competition this season, it was achieved when Steve Waugh (75*) and Michael Bevan (43*) emphatically put the seal on some fine work from their team's bowlers earlier in the day.

The last time that these two sides each had their international players available to them for a one-day meeting (two seasons ago at this venue to be precise), Tasmania recorded a very easy win. Today, things could not have been more different.

The gods smiled kindly on Waugh at the toss - for the second time here this week - and his decision to insert the Tasmanians yielded decisive results. By as quickly as the eleven over mark, the Tigers' top and middle order lay in ruin and, notwithstanding a laudable fightback with the bat, the match was as good as over even by then.

Disastrously, captain Jamie Cox (0) was lost to a run out only two deliveries into the innings and it set a poor tone for the next hour. The ill news continued when dashing left hander Michael DiVenuto (10) was well caught by wicketkeeper Brad Haddin to his left after forcing away from his body at a Nathan Bracken (2/21 off seven overs) ball which lifted on him. In the sixth over, the Blues struck probably their most crucial blow of all on the capricious pitch when Bracken found the outside edge of the normally broad Ricky Ponting (0) bat to conjure a catch for Mark Waugh at second slip. And then in the eleventh over, the horribly out of form Shaun Young (1) became the fourth man to depart after being well caught, low to the ground at backward point, by Mark Higgs off the medium pace of Shawn Bradstreet (1/22 from seven overs).

This action had all come on the back of a two-hour delay caused by the unreadiness of the pitch at the western end of the Bellerive Oval square. While overcast, Hobart's weather was perfectly fit for play to start on time this morning; however, the pitch was not. The force of the driving rain deposited at the ground by a late afternoon thunderstorm yesterday resulted in the appearance of several wet patches and they needed to be dried this morning before the midday start was made possible. This contributed to a reduction of the match to a thirty-eight over per side affair and granted the Blues the luxury of being able to exploit variability in bounce and healthy seam movement.

Daniel Marsh (57*) again underlined his capabilities with the bat to lead a recovery, combining with Dene Hills (40) and Scott Kremerskothen (23) to both stabilise and add some scoring momentum to the innings. However, it was the Blues' bowlers - and pacemen Bracken and Brett Lee (1/27 from eight) in particular - who clearly commanded most of the plaudits after the opening session. The Tigers' eventual tally of 8/162, while respectable, never looked like it would be enough.

When Haddin (2) and Michael Slater (18) let over-impetuosity get the better of them in a mad dash for quick runs at the start of the chase, the Tasmanians raised flickering hopes of an unlikely upset. But, following a few anxious early moments as he played and missed outside the line of off stump from the back foot, Steve Waugh (75* off 73 deliveries) was in command from there and the Blues careered away to victory. He clubbed nine fours and two sixes in a belligerent display, his most memorable blow coming in the form of an audacious lofted cut that slammed into the pavilion. With his brother Mark (22), the skipper added fifty-seven for the third wicket in quick time before stepping up the pace even further in a brutal, unbroken eighty-six run assault in the space of a mere thirty-five minutes for the fourth with Bevan (43* off 23 balls).

In the end, the visitors had nearly six overs to spare in their pursuit of the bonus point offered to any side that can score at a rate at least one and a quarter runs per over times that of their opponents. The Tasmanians, for their part, looked aimless in the absence of their best one-day bowler, injured speedster Damien Wright. Young produced a brilliant catch running to deep extra cover from wide mid off, and Ponting a characteristic direct-hit run out from backward point. But that was about as much as a decent-sized home crowd was left to smile about.