Dream day for Windies World Cup debutants
S Rajesh and HR Gopalakrishna
March 13, 2007
http://content-wi.cricinfo.com/wc2007/content/current/story/285113.htmlWest Indies' 54-run win in the opening match of the 2007 World Cup was the seventh time out of nine that the team batting first won the first game of the tournament. Cricinfo looks at the other stats highlights from the match.
# Chris Gayle became the only batsman to face the first ball of the World Cup on two occasions - he had taken strike against South Africa in the first game of the 2003 World Cup as well. Interestingly, he made just 2 on both occasions.
# Samuels's 63 was the highest score in the match, making it the second time in World Cup history that no hundreds were scored in the opening game. The only other instance was in 1999, when Alec Stewart top-scored with 88.
# Gayle's recent form with the bat is a bit of a worry - this was his seventh single-digit score in his last nine innings. He has only scored 122, at an average of 13.56.
# Shivnarine Chanderpaul's stodgy 63-ball 19 (strike rate 30.15) was his second-slowest ODI innings in which he faced at least 50 balls. The only instance when he batted even slower was against Bangladesh at Kingston in 2004, when he crawled to 15 from 54 balls (strike rate 27.77).
# Samuels has now made fifty-plus scores in four of his last seven innings - he averages 63.17 in those innings.
# This was an excellent match for West Indies' World Cup debutants. There were five of them, and they all had a good time: Dwayne Smith hammered a vital 32 and took three wickets, Dwayne Bravo chipped in with three late wickets, Denesh Ramdin pouched three catches, while Daren Powell and Jerome Taylor bowled incisive spells with the new ball.
# The six that Corey Collymore struck off the last ball of the West Indies innings was the first of his international career.
# When Inzamam-ul-Haq was trapped in front by Dwayne Smith, it was the 39th time he had been dismissed in that manner in ODIs. This puts him on par with Sanath Jayasuriya for the most number of lbw dismissals.
# The next time Inzamam wins the toss, he might think twice before choosing to field. In ten World Cup games when Pakistan have inserted the opposition, they've lost seven times.
# For the first time in one-day internationals, both captains who went out to toss had more than 10,000 ODI runs.
# This match was the 1000th one-day international of the decade. In the entire 1990s, only 933 ODIs were played.
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