Ruthless Australia crush Windies to win Hobart Test

The West Indies received some positive news Friday – scans cleared Shannon Gabriel of a left ankle fracture, but the fast bowler will take no further part in the Hobart Test and possibly the tour.

Australia enforced the follow on with the tourists trailing by 360 runs.

But Marsh (182) ensured his spot after his 449-run stand with Voges (269no) in Hobart – a new Test record for the fourth wicket.

“I’ve always held the view that promoting Test cricket is not just about the contest itself, it’s also about an opportunity to see great players, great players creating history”, Sutherland said in Hobart. Brathwaite had scored 63.51% of West Indies’ 148, the highest percentage ever by a West Indian in a Test innings.

Given the problems that have beset West Indies cricket over the last decade it is perhaps unfair to expect Holder, who only turned 24 last month, to arrest the decline.

Rajendra Chandrika edged to slip off Pattinson for the third duck of his four-innings Test career, Bravo was caught with leaden feet and chopped on, Marlon Samuels saw one fly off the shoulder of his bat to gully for 3, and Jermaine Blackwood completed a pair for the match when he was bowled by a Pattinson ball that stayed low.

Pattinson haul included the second-innings wicket of Bravo for four, ensuring the West Indies batsman was dismissed twice in 37 minutes.

Only opener Kraigg Brathwaite with a counter-attacking 94 showed any resistance, hammering 13 fours and a six off 122 deliveries before he was last out. “I thought Shaun played beautifully throughout this Test match”.

“When we sat down two years ago about changing my action it was about trying to stay on the park and not get injured, but if I bowl like I did in the first innings I won’t be playing too many games anyway”, he told ABC Radio.

“At the Boxing Day Test match in 1992 I took 7-52 and then I knew I was in the team, after that you approach the game differently”, Warne said.

As Jason Holder slowly and ruefully trudged back to the pavilion after his second innings dismissal on Saturday, to a leg-side tickle to the keeper, it was the first sign that the pressure after defeat of his first three Tests at the helm, two by an innings, were impacting on the young, inexperienced captain.

It was just five runs short of eclipsing Australia’s biggest Test win over the Windies, notched way back in Brisbane in 1931.

Right-hander Khawaja missed the first Test between the two sides because of an injury.

But it was his first-innings performance that had Warne and Healy raving as he took three early wickets to trigger the West Indies’ collapse. It felt like I was trying extremely hard to do that, whereas the second innings when I came out I was running straight lines and had my wrist behind the ball it felt pretty easy. “We have to exercise patience a lot more when we bowl and we’ll be a lot more successful”.