West Indies' 54-run win in the opening match of the 2007 World Cup was the seventh time out of nine that the team batting first won the first game of the tournament. Cricinfo looks at the other stats highlights from the match.
There were more similarities between this game and the first match of the 2003 edition: after 37 overs, West Indies were 142 for 2 in that match; here they were 143 for 3. Thereafter, though, the two innings diverged: in the Newlands game, West Indies hammered 136 in the last 13 overs, 48 more than they scored at Kingston. This was an excellent match for West Indies' World Cup debutants. There were five of them, and they all had a good time: Dwayne Smith hammered a vital 32 and took three wickets, Dwayne Bravo chipped in with three late wickets, Denesh Ramdin pouched three catches, while Daren Powell and Jerome Taylor bowled incisive spells with the new ball. The six that Corey Collymore struck off the last ball of the West Indies innings was the first of his international career. When Inzamam-ul-Haq was trapped in front by Dwayne Smith, it was the 39th time he had been dismissed in that manner in ODIs. This puts him on par with Sanath Jayasuriya for the most number of lbw dismissals. For the first time in one-day internationals, both captains who went out to toss had more than 10,000 ODI runs. This match was the 1000th one-day international of the decade. In the entire 1990s, only 933 ODIs were played.