Fiery Mitchell Starc blows West Indies away in Australia’s 133-run victory
What! a return for Mitchell Starc with figures of 5 for 48 as Australia beat West Indies by 133 runs to take a 1-0 in the three-match ODI series.
Australia's stand-in captain Alex Carey scored a half-century and pace bowler Mitchell Starc took five wickets as they beat West Indies by 133 runs in a rain-hit opening match of their one-day international series in Barbados on Tuesday. Mitchell Starc (5/48) and Josh Hazelwood (3/11) dismantled West Indies to win the opening ODI by 133 runs in a rain-hit opening match of their one-day international series.
Captain Kieron Pollard helped the home team fend off the threat of a record low score, making 56 and putting on 68 for the seventh wicket with Alzarri Joseph (17) as West Indies’ innings was in tatters at 27-6 in the eighth over and they were finally all out in the 27th over chasing a revised total of 257 in 49 overs in a rain-affected match.
Alex Carey made a promising start to his first match as Australia captain as he top-scored with a neat half-century. For the West Indies Hayden Walsh Jr carried his T20 form into a return to the ODI set-up with a career-best five-wicket haul to keep the visitors to an underwhelming 252. Carey and Ashton Turner added 104 in 19 overs for the fifth wicket but Walsh Jr, a late addition to the ODI squad, then took five wickets in the space of 16 deliveries. On a surface that did not always look especially easy to score freely on the left-arm spinner, Akeal Hosein had also done an excellent job with two wickets.
“My biggest thing (in batting) is that I want the guys to fight, not just give it away because the ball is swinging or moving,” Pollard said. “I don’t like soft dismissals. We’ve worked long and hard enough. I think the most disappointing factor for me is we didn’t show that sort of fight.”
The West Indies were 23-5 when Dwayne Bravo fell to Hazlewood in the sixth over and Hazlewood had three wickets for three runs when he dismissed Jason Holder two overs later.
“It was a special day, we had three debutants and a guy captaining Australia for the first time,” Starc said. “I thought we did a fantastic job with the bat to get to 250 with a couple of really good partnerships."
Earlier in the T20 Series, the Aaron Finch-led Australian side suffered a massive 4-1 defeat in the T20I series by T20 World Cup defending champion West Indies ahead of the upcoming T20 WC. The teams meet again on Thursday in the second match and on Saturday for the final ODI.
