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Wednesday, July 23, 2025

Hazlewood rips through Windies’ batting to bowl Australia to victory

by

Sport Desk
25 days ago
20250628
Australia's captain Pat Cummins celebrates with teammates after defeating West Indies on day three of the first cricket Test match at Kensington Stadium in Bridgetown, Barbados, Friday, June 27, 2025. (AP Photo/Ricardo Mazalan)

Australia's captain Pat Cummins celebrates with teammates after defeating West Indies on day three of the first cricket Test match at Kensington Stadium in Bridgetown, Barbados, Friday, June 27, 2025. (AP Photo/Ricardo Mazalan)

AP Photo

BRIDGETOWN – Josh Ha­zle­wood ran through the West In­dies’ top or­der with a su­perb spell of fast bowl­ing to lead Aus­tralia to a stun­ning 159-run vic­to­ry over the home side on the third day of the open­ing Test match at Kens­ing­ton Oval in Bar­ba­dos on Fri­day.

Hazel­wood grabbed 5-43, his 13th five-wick­et haul in Tests, as the West In­dies, chas­ing 300 runs for vic­to­ry were skit­tled out for 141 late in the evening.

It was a sen­sa­tion­al turn­around to a match that was locked in the bal­ance at the start of the day.

Re­sum­ing the day on 92 for four – an over­all lead of 82 – Aus­tralia took con­trol of the match with a strong bat­ting ef­fort that saw Travis Head, Beau Web­ster and Alex Carey score half-cen­turies to pro­pel them to 310 in their sec­ond in­nings.

West In­dies were let down by their field­ing once again, with Justin Greaves putting down a straight­for­ward chance at sec­ond slip to get rid of Head off the bowl­ing of Alzarri Joseph af­ter he had added just eight runs to his overnight 13.

It was an op­por­tu­ni­ty they would live to re­gret, as Head and Web­ster com­bined for a 102-run part­ner­ship that licked the wind out of their sails.

Play­er-of-the-Match Head brought up his sec­ond 50 of the match and 19th Test half-cen­tu­ry by dri­ving medi­um pac­er Justin Greaves through ex­tra cov­er for four as Aus­tralia cruised past the 150-run mark.

He then hit pac­er Shamar Joseph for two bound­aries in the 53rd over but lost his wick­et just be­fore the lunch break when he was out­done by a de­liv­ery that kept low from Shamar Joseph to be lbw for 61.

The Aussies went to lunch on 181 for five and im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter the lunch break Web­ster guid­ed Jay­den Seales to the third man bound­ary for four to bring up his 50.

He added 41 with Alex Carey be­fore he was caught down the leg side by wick­et­keep­er Shai Hope off the bowl­ing of Shamar Joseph for 63 to leave the score 208 for six.

Fol­low­ing his dis­missal, Carey im­posed his dom­i­nance in a counter-at­tack­ing in­nings of 65 from 75 de­liv­er­ies with sev­en fours and two six­es.

He re­ceived good sup­port from Mitchell Starc (16), Josh Ha­zle­wood (12) and Nathan Ly­on who scored an un­beat­en 13.

Shamar Joseph cleaned up the tail to pick up his fourth five-wick­et haul of 5-87, to fin­ish with match fig­ures of 9-133.

Set a chal­leng­ing 300 runs for vic­to­ry on a de­te­ri­o­rat­ing pitch, West In­dies lost open­er Kraigg Brath­waite cheap­ly for just four.

Kea­cy Car­ty joined John Camp­bell, and the two car­ried their side to a com­fort­able po­si­tion of 47 for one, un­til Ha­zle­wood set about de­stroy­ing the in­nings.

He be­gan by hav­ing Camp­bell caught be­hind by wick­et­keep­er Carey at­tempt­ing a pad­dle shot, and with his very next de­liv­ery he had Bran­don King caught at gul­ly off an in­side edge that ric­o­cheted off his pad, to leave the score 47 for three.

Ros­ton Chase pre­vent­ed the hat-trick, but he was dis­missed in sim­i­lar fash­ion by Ha­zle­wood two runs lat­er, this time in­side edg­ing a de­liv­ery off his pads to short leg where Sam Kon­stas took an easy catch.

Ha­zle­wood wasn’t done just yet, re­turn­ing to rat­tle Car­ty’s stumps with an in­swinger that kept low, and when Pat Cum­mins bowled Shai Hope with a ball that nev­er got up, West In­dies had slumped to 61 for six.

Alzarri Joseph was then run out with­out trou­bling the score and Jomel War­ri­can could on­ly edge Ha­zle­wood be­hind to give him his fifth wick­et.

It took an en­ter­tain­ing knock of 44 from Shamar Joseph off just 22 balls to ex­cite the home fans, as he played some su­perb shots that in­clud­ed four fours and four six­es.

He added 55 runs with Justin Greaves for the ninth wick­et, but once he was dis­missed by Nathan Ly­on, the end came swift­ly with Jay­den Seales al­so falling to Ly­on's first ball.

CMC

Brief scores

AUS­TRALIA 180 & 310 in 81.5 overs (Alex Carey 65, Beau Web­ster 63, Travis Head 61, Mitchell Starc 16, Cameron Green 15, Us­man Khawa­ja 15, Nathan Ly­on 13 not out, Josh In­glis 12, Josh Ha­zle­wood 12; Shamar Joseph 5-87, Alzarri Joseph 2-65).

WEST IN­DIES 190 & 141 in 34 overs (Shamar Joseph 44, Justin Greaves 38 not out, John Camp­bell 23, Kea­cy Car­ty 20; Josh Ha­zle­wood 5-43, Nathan Ly­on 2-20).

Aus­tralia won by 159 runs.


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