Australia regroup in ODI, India's Test woes continue.

Australia 5/133 (28 ov, S Marsh 70) def Sri Lanka 132 (38.4 ov, M Jayawardene 53, B Lee 4/15, X Doherty 4/28)by 5 wkts: ODI#4/5 at Colombo (Premadasa Stadium) . Australia lead series 3-1.

Sri Lanka fell apart with the bat, losing 8/37 in the face of some good Australian bowling by Brett Lee and Xavier Doherty.

132 didn't look enough, and Shaun Marsh, brought into the team in place of Steve Smith, made sure it wasn't with a vigorous 70/80b (1x6, 11x4) at the top of the order.

Good to see Doherty, whose place I thought might be in doubt, named player of the match for his 4/28 from 10 overs.



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Meanwhile in London at The Oval yet another onesided Test match is unfolding or, from an Indian perspective, unravelling:

India 5/103 (33ov, R Dravid 57*) trail England 6/591 dec (I Bell 235, K Pietersen 175) by 488 runs with 5 1st inns wickets in hand: T#4D3 at The Oval.

Ian Bell 235/364b (2x6, 23x4) and Kevin Pietersen 175/232b (27x4) have batted India out of the match.

Foxtel only showed an hour of the rain-shortened D3 highlights, but they included Virender Sehwag's 8/6b (2x4), his first runs of the series, and Graeme Swann's three wickets, one a well executed though very close -IMO too close to give out - stumping. With Swann extracting some turn and bounce,a fourth English win is looking more likely. Only Rahul Dravid has knuckled down to the batting job.



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Australia take series as England again underperform

Australia 3/221 (43.4 ov, M Clarke 62*, T Paine 51) def England 220 (46.3 0v, A Strauss 63, B Lee 5/49) ODI #4 at Lords. Australia lead series 4-0.

Looked like a glorious day at Lord's. Good bowling from the Australians, especially Brett Lee in the final overs, saw England, Andrew Strauss again the exception, underperform with the bat.

With Ricky Ponting restored to the team 220 was never going to be enough and so, though the skipper didn't match his opposite number his 48 plus Michael Clarke (who is improving with each innings in the series) and Tim Paine's contributions saw their side home in a canter.


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The bar raised even higher but NZ still clear it

In the final Chappell-Hadlee match at Hamilton today Australia's 5/346 from 50 overs featured a magnificent 181 no /166b from Matthew Hayden, the highest ever ODI score by an Australian. Yet it was still not enough to hold New Zealand who recovered from 4/41, then 5/116, to reach 9/350 in 49.3 overs thanks mainly to Craig McMillan (117/96b) and Brendon McCullum (86 no/91b) who put on 165 in 147 b for the 6th wicket.

For all that it was the closest of the three games, but from an Australian perspective the underlying problems revealed in the series, especially the bowling deficiencies, remain. In the tournament the Australian bowlers took 13 wickets (today a wicket fell to a run out) for 836 runs in 752 legitimate balls. Hardly World Cup winning material.

New Zealand seem to have played above themselves and, it goes without saying, must now hope that they can maintain their form in the World Cup. At full strength (and I'm not quite sure what that is given their talented but injury prone playing list) they ought to be a match for any other team they're likely to meet in the Caribbean.

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