Australia save best for last

Clint McKays five-wicket haul key as hosts beat Sri Lanka by 16 runs in the third final

Had that yorker stayed on middle and not drifted towards leg,Lasith Malinga would have claimed his first wicket of the match. More importantly,the Sri Lankan slinger would have reduced Australia to eight down for just 181 runs.

But the ball shifted down Clint McKay8217;s pads an inch too much,and the Aussie tailender got enough wood on it to run it down to the fine-leg boundary. McKay was a relieved man,while Brett Lee pumped his fists from a non-striker8217;s end. Reduced to 177 for seven in the 38th over after being put in to bat in the all-important,series-deciding,third final of the tri-series,it would be fair to say that everything that could go wrong had gone so for Australia until then. From 75 for no loss when David Warner was looking to score his third century in as many finals to 115 for one when Rangana Herath struck for the first time,Australia had lost six wickets for just 62 runs. Now,with McKay and Lee out there in the middle,the threat of being bowled out for less than 200 was looming large.

But that8217;s when two Aussie fast bowlers decided to address the biggest crisis haunting the home dressing room that of playing a bigger role in the game. Not burdened by the weight of expectations,Lee and McKay threw their willows around in the death overs,undoing all the good that Mahela Jaywardene8217;s men had done for a major portion of the game.

McKay ended up notching 28 brisk runs,while Lee scored a crafty 32.

Lower-order rescue act

During that eighth wicket stand,they punctured the Lankan morale with five more boundaries between them,including a mighty six off Nuwan Kulasekara by McKay. The partnership was worth 40 runs and the sum of their contributions was worth 60; but in terms of what it did to the Aussie innings and the amount of confidence that the stand injected in their bowling veins,it was worth a whole lot more.

So,not long after taking Australia to 231 in the first innings,McKay and Lee resumed their camaraderie with the new ball. This time,they finished off the job that they had started with the bat,crippling the Lankan top-order of Tillakaratne Dilshan,Jayawardene,Kumar Sangakkara and Dinesh Chandimal the four most dangerous batsmen in this series evenly between them before the 10th over. Sri Lanka were stuttering at 53/4,and despite a fantastic rearguard knock of 71 by Upul Tharanga,the early stammer cost them the game,finals and series by 16 runs.

For that perfect coda to a sparkling summer,the Aussies will thank their new one-day hero Man of the Match McKay. With only his second five-for in international cricket,a measly one that cost just 28 runs in 9.5 overs,McKay terrorised the Lankans with his command over the ball and cunning slower balls.

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He had a perfect fast bowler8217;s game,in the sense that he lobbed Sri Lankas head off,sent tremors through its body,before coming back to clean up the tail. And it all started when he joined in the wicket taking act in the eighth over.

The first delivery thudded into Chandimal8217;s pads,but McKay hadn8217;t brought it in nearly enough for a lbw decision to go in his favour.

But two balls later,he would. Chandimal continued to walk across the stumps,and this time he paid the price with his wicket for just 5 runs. It was the first of his five,but the best ball McKay would bowl all night arrived just a couple of overs later,when he pegged the Lankan captain8217;s off-stump back by getting it to sneak through his gate. Lahiru Thirimanne and Tharanga kept the game alive with a solid 60-run fifth wicket stand. But once the former was dismissed for 30,Tharanga found the going extremely hard,especially with Lee and McKay making constant inroads at the other end.

With 28 runs required off the last four overs,McKay cleaned up Herath for nought,before coming back two overs later to teach Malinga how to bowl a perfect,stump-shattering yorker to a tail-ender. An innings earlier,Malinga had missed with McKay 22 yards away. And it probably was the moment that cost them their most important match in Australia this summer.