Ruthless Australia crush West indies to win first Test in Hobart

Bravo played with class to be undefeated on 94 as West Indies stumbled to 207 for six after Australia declared their first innings on 583 for four at Bellerive Oval.

Josh Hazlewood took seven wickets in the match and James Pattinson five for 27 in the second innings, with impressive individual efforts by the tourists’ Darren Bravo and Kraigg Brathwaite in vain.

By the time he removed Jason Holder in the 21st over, fortuitously as the West Indies captain tickled a poor delivery down leg-side, he had the fourth five-wicket haul of his career.

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.

More than one player, now unavailable due to their commitments to global T20 franchises, has told me they feel the West Indies they would officially represent is really the WICB.

Australia has a pleasant selection headache ahead of the next Test against the West Indies with a decision on who to play between in-form Shaun Marsh and returning Usman Khawaja, captain Steve Smith said on Saturday.

Voges was named man of the match for his unbeaten 269 in the match-turning partnership with fellow Western Australian thirty something Marsh.

“It was frustrating because I had changed my action and I didn’t feel completely comfortable with it”, Pattinson said. Brathwaite had scored 63.51% of West Indies’ 148, the highest percentage ever by a West Indian in a Test innings. We’ve got to make sure he’s playing BBL to get some sort of match fitness and see how the strain of the hamstring is and then when we get him in on the 23rd (December) we’ll have a look at him and see whether he’s available to play. “We just need to do the good things for longer”. Smith said that he does not want anymore damage.

In the morning, Hazlewood was on song after he broke the 99-run stand for the seventh wicket in West Indies’s first innings, between Bravo and Roach.

Taylor, the same bowler who started his previous Test against the same opponents on his home ground of Sabina Park in Kingston in June, with five consecutive maidens and two wickets, and Roach, well down in pace from his trip down-under five years earlier, each got the series underway with a no-ball, first up.

“It felt like I was trying extremely hard to do that, whereas the second innings (yesterday) when I came out I was running straight lines and had my wrist behind the ball, it felt pretty easy”.

Marlon Samuels came and went for three, caught off the bat’s handle by David Warner, and Jermaine Blackwood completed a pair of ducks when he was out the next ball, bowled by Pattinson.

For the second time in the day, an Australian bowler began a new over on a hat-trick – but Brathwaite pushed Pattinson calmly into the off side for a single.