Cricket: England, led impeccably by Michael Vaughan with bat, ball and brain in perhaps his finest limited-overs international, beat Australia by six wickets yesterday to go forward to the Champions Trophy final at The Oval this Saturday. The victory consigned to history five years of misery and 14 successive one-day defeats by their old enemy.
They will meet the winners of today's semi-final between West Indies and Pakistan and will be afraid of neither. Vaughan and his team are on the verge of winning their first major limited-overs trophy.
This was no fluke. Australia have collected many battle honours in the past decade and a half but the Champions Trophy is not among them. They were desperate to set the record straight and maintain their pre-eminence in both forms of the game. Instead they were overwhelmed by one of the most complete performances an England side can ever have produced on the limited-overs field.
Australia, put in on a chill, blustery day, were restricted, on a good surface, to 259 for nine as the England bowlers performed to a high standard. Four batsmen, Adam Gilchrist, Damien Martyn, Darren Lehmann and Michael Clarke, got real starts; only Martyn went on to a half-century as England maintained discipline and chipped away.
It looked, and proved, an indefensible total. The early loss of Vikram Solanki proved little more than an irritant. Marcus Trescothick made 81 from 88 balls, adding 140 for the second wicket with Vaughan, who threw off a mediocre one-day record to produce86 from 112 balls.
In the process he savaged Brett Lee, one of the world's fastest bowlers. And when Trescothick was bowled, trying to cut Andrew Symonds' off-spin, Andrew Strauss emerged to cut, dab, sweep and pull his way to an unbeaten 52, scored from 42 balls.
Vaughan's eventual dismissal, to a persevering Lee, who took his hammering and still ran in, allowed a cameo from Andrew Flintoff before Paul Collingwood pulled the winning boundary with 21 balls in hand.
Maybe, just maybe, the wheel is turning, for Australia looked off the pace, not so much with the bat, with which Clarke in particular showed what the next generation is capable of, but with the ball. Glenn McGrath is barely fast-medium now and holds no terrors: it will be a surprise if he bowls against England again. Of the others Lee, by all accounts, has not been the same bowler since his return from ankle surgery, Jason Gillespie probed with little success and Michael Kasprowicz was steady but not incisive.
Most apparent, though, is the gap left by the retirement from one-day cricket of Shane Warne. Batsmen come and batsmen go but it is the decline of him and McGrath which will finally pull Australia back into the pack.
Nor, for that matter, did Australia have the rub of the green, and McGrath will swear to his dying day that Trescothick was lbw when he had seven.
It was Vaughan's treatment of Lee which most encapsulated the day. His innings had been characterised in its early stages by uncertainty, as if he was still struggling to understand his role. His record against Australia is astounding, though, and Lee was greeted with an array of strokes as fine as any seen this summer.
There was a clip through midwicket, another ball lacerated through extra cover and another punched through the off side off the back foot. Next came a rifle-crack pull through midwicket, followed by the most sumptuous of extra-cover drives and finally yet another back-foot drive.
Lee's first three overs had cost 30 and the bonds were broken.
England were superb in the field, with a ground-fielding display that was virtually flawless, excellent catching with the exception of a slip catch put down by Trescothick that reprieved Gilchrist early on.
Steve Harmison's figures in no way reflect the discomfort he inflicted on the openers, and Darren Gough responded at the end of the innings with bowling that helped keep Australia in range.
Whether the pre-match strategy involved Vaughan bowling himself through a full quota of overs, something he had done only once before, or whether it was the captain thinking on the hoof - the latter is surely the more likely - it was a brilliant, not to say brave, move on a pitch that just grabbed slightly. Only 42 came from his 10 overs, with the wickets of Martyn and Lehmann. With Ashley Giles claiming one for 40, it was a triumph for England spin. And who, 12 months ago, would have thought that? Guardian Service
Champions Trophy Scoreboard
AUSTRALIA
A Gilchrist c Trescothick b Gough 37
M Hayden c Trescothick b Harmison 17
R Ponting c Gough b Giles 29
D Martyn c Trescothick b Vaughan 65
D Lehman b Vaughan 38
A Symonds run out 0
M Clarke b Flintoff 42
B Lee b Gough 15
J Gillespie b Gough 0
M Kasprowicz not out 0
G McGrath not out 0
Extras (b-3 lb-4 w-7 nb-2) 16
Total (for nine wickets, 50 overs) 259
Fall of wickets: 1-44 2-69 3-114 4-189 5-190 6-210 7-249 8-249 9-258
Bowling: Gough 7-1-48-3, Harmison 10-0-53-1, Flintoff 10-0-56-1, Giles 10-0-40-1, Wharf 3-0-13-0, Vaughan 10-0-42-2
ENGLAND
M Trescothick b Symonds 81
V Solanki lbw b Gillespie 7
M Vaughan c Hayden b Lee 86
A Strauss not out 52
A Flintoff c Hayden b Lee 16
P Collingwood not out 6
Extras (lb-5 w-5 nb-4) 14
Total (for four wickets, 46.3 overs) 262
Fall of wickets: 1-21 2-161 3-227 4-249
Bowling: McGrath 8-0-46-0, Gillespie 8-0-32-1, Kasprowicz 10-0-52-0, Lee 8.3-0-65-2, Lehmann 6-0-28-0, Symonds 6-1-34-1
England won by six wickets
