The latest news from the sports desk reveals that Australia skipper Ricky Ponting won the toss and elected to bat against Zimbabwe.
The defending champions begin their World Cup campaign at the Sardar Patel Stadium, Motera, Ahmedabad.
Ponting said, “There were no injury worries for the four-time winner ahead of the Group A match at the Sardar Patel Stadium, and the Australians were eager to get going. Australia lost both its warm-up matches.”
As expected, Australia is going to play with three fast bowlers, with Brett Lee, Shaun Tait and Mitchell Johnson and with only one off-spinner Jason Krejza.
Australia have been unbeaten in 22 matches in the last two tournaments played in South Africa (2003) and West Indies (2007), under Ricky Ponting.
The Aussies have a superb batting line-up in which Shane Watson, who opens the batting, and Ponting are crucial in the top order to lay the platform for others to build upon.
Watson has performed brilliantly with the bat in ODIs in the last year, having scored 832 runs and Zimbabwe's think tank would have talked about ways of stopping the Queenslander from taking the game away.
Teams:
Australia: SR Watson, BJ Haddin (wk), RT Ponting (capt), MJ Clarke, CL White, DJ Hussey, SPD Smith, MG Johnson, SW Tait, JJ Krejza, B Lee
Zimbabwe: BRM Taylor, CK Coventry, T Taibu (wk), SC Williams, CR Ervine, E Chigumbura (capt), P Utseya, SW Masakadza, AG Cremer, Regis Chakabva, RW Price
Umpires: Asoka de Silva and Richard Kettleborough
Third umpire: Amish Saheba
Match Referee: Jeff Crowe
2 comments:
Aussi did not batted at their best today......just 263 runs on the board.....
I was thinking that Aussi players wil hit the ball the ball all-around the ground...but htey failed to do so...poor performance by them.....better luck next time....
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