Tasmania tastes first success

After three losses, Tasmania has finally tasted success in the Mercantile Mutual Cup competition, defeating Victoria by nine wickets with thirteen overs to spare at the Melbourne Cricket Ground today.

A man-of-the-match effort from acting captain Ricky Ponting (64*) paved the way for the Tigers, who became the third team to come away with a bonus point against the disappointing Bushrangers when they reached the winning target inside forty overs.

After losing opener Matthew Elliott (0) to the third ball of the day, the home team never recovered from a top order collapse, managing just 8/164 from their fifty overs. The bowlers did not fare much better, with captain Paul Reiffel going for a whopping forty runs off his six overs.

Captaining Tasmania for the first time, Ponting enjoyed the fine win immensely.

"It was a really good feeling out there this morning and we arrived here yesterday and had a good training session. I sat down with the guys and had a bit of a chat and said that things probably hadn't gone as we would've planned so far this year but let's really get out there and enjoy it as much as we can tomorrow, we're playing on the great ground, we've got a good bunch of blokes together and we got out there and enjoyed ourselves today and things went the way that we planned them to," he said.

"This game today went perfectly. It's pretty easy to captain when you're doing everything right out on the ground."

Coming off just sixty-nine balls, Ponting's sparkling innings was the highlight of the match. He struck six fours and three sixes during his unbeaten knock, singling out his opposite number for severe punishment. Two of his sixes were smashed off Reiffel's bowling, leaving the opposition down, disappointed and disheartened.

There weren't too many positives for Victoria today, with the batting of Ben Oliver (39*) and Darren Berry (36) the only worthy achievements. On his thirty-first birthday, Berry, who has had a lean summer so far, picked the right moment to get back among the runs. Together with twenty-one year old Ben Oliver, the wicketkeeper helped amass a run-a-minute sixty-seven run partnership that added respectability to the Victorian total.

Having lost Elliott in the first over, and the rest of the top order by the thirty-first over, Berry and Oliver set about restoring some pride. They were the only Bushranger batsmen to score more than thirty runs, after Peter Harper (22), Ian Harvey (6), Clinton Peake (1), Matthew Mott (16) and Michael Klinger (11) all failed to make a major impact.

After the match, Reiffel lamented the poor batting performance, saying that the team had to find a reason why it had not scored two hundred runs in the one-day competition after four games this summer.

"It's getting a little frustrating. You know, they've been on pretty reasonable wickets. As much as you can win games with 160 on the board, it gets really hard," he said.

"To have a score well over two hundred would be nice but it hasn't happened and we've got to try and work out why it's not. We've tried new faces and same thing so that's disappointing. We haven't given up; we'll try it again next time and hopefully do it better.

"I really don't think that we're lacking an ability to make the runs. All the guys have got the ability to do it. Maybe it's confidence," he said.

He said the team's ordinary effort was best summed up by the run out of Peake, who was forced to set off for a run after dropping the ball to his feet when Harper decided upon taking a single. Tasmanian wicketkeeper Sean Clingeleffer calmly gathered the ball and effected the run out at the bowlers end.

"We seemed to have one of those each game, which typifies (the fact that) our thinking's not right. Not just run outs but silly run outs, we tend to do it a lot. Just tells us that we're not quite switched on. It was a good effort that he (Clingeleffer) actually hit the stumps from there. He had to evade two batsmen, still had the gloves on and he still hit the stumps, so that probably summed up our day," Reiffel said.

Victoria now replaces Tasmania at the bottom of the domestic one-day ladder.

The two teams meet again in four days' time, at the same venue, in a Pura Cup clash.