Clarke targets series sweep

Australia look to sign off Caribbean tour in style

Last updated: 5th July 2008   Subscribe to RSS Feed

Clarke targets series sweep

Clarke: leadership opportunity

This series is not over for us just yet.

Michael Clarke
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W Indies v Australia - 5th ODI
July 6, St Kitts
Live on Sky Sports 2 from 2.30pm

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Stand-in captain Michael Clarke wants Australia to show no mercy in the final one-day international against West Indies in St Kitts.

The tourists lead the series 4-0 having kept alive their hopes of a first-ever one-day series sweep in the Caribbean with a dramatic one-run win in Friday's fourth match.

West Indies required eight off Shane Watson's final over to chase a target of 283, but sixth-wicket pair Denesh Ramdin and Darren Sammy crumbled under the pressure, managing just six singles.

That provided Clarke with a winning start as one-day captain and he will lead the side again on Sunday as regular skipper Ricky Ponting has returned home early due to a wrist injury.

"A victory on Sunday and a 5-0 series sweep will mean a lot to us, since it has been our goal when we arrived in the Caribbean to win every match we play on this tour," said Clarke, who was fined 10 percent of his match fee for Australia's slow over-rate on Friday.

"It would be important to us because the new guys coming into the side would get to be a part of a winning side, and we would get to show them the level of performance we expect from them.

"This series is not over for us just yet. We want to win every match, and the fourth ODI was a good example of this, so we will be out there on Sunday looking to win, and giving our best."

Pride

West Indies coach John Dyson is hoping his players can put the disappointment of Friday's defeat behind them and salvage some pride with a victory.

"We are still playing to avoid being beaten 5-0, and the message to the team is that we still have one match to play," said Dyson.

"It would be great to win one match in this series. Australia have said from the start that they wanted to win 5-0, but we do not want to lose 5-0.

"From my point of view, it's much better losing by one run than losing by 100 runs. The fourth ODI could have been decided with one hit. A big hit in the last over, and the game would have been over.

"But I'm never happy that we lose matches. Whether we should have won it or not is a matter of conjecture. Australia got 282 on the board, and that's a reasonable total, and if you look at the run chases we had in this series, we have not made 282 or come close to getting lesser totals than this.

"We were always going to have to bat well, and I think we batted pretty well, but it came down to a one-hit game in the last over, and we just couldn't quite do it."