Same old story

The West Indies presented 33 unearned runs and the equivalent of 5.3 additional overs in wides and no-balls to a Pakistan team proclaimed by its captain as the strongest in the world in their latest match in the Toronto Festival yesterday.

It was like Obadele Thompson racing Maurice Greene with a 10- pound weight strapped around his waist. Predictably, they lost.

They further handicapped themselves with their continuing, illogical experimentation with the batting order, shifting their most prolific batsman, Ricardo Powell, from No. 6 to No. 3.

They might as well have thrown a boulder into the ocean to see if it could float.

It is a position patently unsuited to Powell's free-hitting style and one that he had never filled before. Just as predictably, he failed.

That the West Indies got as close as 15 runs was due to Pakistani generosity in missing three simple catches.

Sherwin Campbell made the best of his escape, a skier to Abdul Razzaq's lap off Waqar Younis when he was one, to accumulate an assertive 69 off 107 balls with six fours.

It was his fourth half-century in six matches on the double tour of Singapore and Toronto, but his senseless run out and Brian Lara's dismissal to a flying catch at wide mid-off by substitute Hasan Raza once more to the pull shot in the 35th and 36th overs virtually settled the outcome.

The West Indies were then 138 for five, chasing Pakistan's 230 for six, requiring another 91.

Shivnarine Chanderpaul raised the heartbeat of the noisy, if numbered, West Indians in the crowd with three thumping fours in an over that cost Waqar Younis 14 and nine more in the next over from Aamer Sohail's left-arm spin.

He needed to remain to the end to achieve an unlikely victory for only the tailend fast bowlers were to follow. Instead, he miscued a catch to point in the same Sohail over the 42nd and Jimmy Adams didn't have the power to finish the task after that.

While Pakistan plundered 30 off Merv Dillon's last two overs 19 off the last with a six and three successive fours by Azhar Mahmood the off-spin wizard Saqlain Mushtaq allowed only one off the last of the West Indies innings.

Contrast

The contrast was at the top as much as the bottom.

The left-handed Saeed Anwar, his former captain Ramiz Raja's choice as Man-Of-The-Match, and the right-hander Wajitullah Wasti with considerable assistance from Reon King (11 wides and a noball), Hendy Bryan (seven wides) and Dillon (five wides and two no-balls) set the foundation for Pakistan's total with a record first wicket partnership against the West Indies of 131 in 29.1 overs.

By their ninth over, the West Indies had lost Ridley Jacobs, lbw to Younis, and Powell, bowled middle stump by the persistent Razzak after a lap-high chance to Akram at midoff from his second ball from Younis.

Powell did manage the inevitable six from the 11 balls he faced, off Waqar over long-off, but one down is clearly not his preferred position.

Campbell and the left-handed Wavell Hinds, in his second International, steadied the West Indies for the next 18 overs with a partnership of 68. Hinds played solidly for 16 but was the first of three needless run outs.

Campbell, backing up too far on Lara's push to cover, was stranded feet out of his crease, and Hendy Bryan carelessly lingered too far out of his on a drive to Akram at short extracover.

While Anwar and Wasti were in charge, a Pakistani total approaching 300 did not seem beyond them.

Both had luck on their side. Umpire Dave Orchard ruled an edge to the keeper by Wasti off Bryan to be a bound ball when he was 15 and he was badly dropped at deep mid-wicket two runs later by Adams.

Anwar escaped a difficult, swirling chance off Bryan to Lara, running back from mid-off, when he was 35.