Cricket: A Taylor-made bet rewards Waugh
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Your support makes all the difference.Australians 391-4 dec and 34-0 dec
Kent 114-2 dec and 222
Australians win by 89 runs
WHEN Bradman's 1948 Australians came to the St Lawrence ground they pulled in 44,000 spectators in two days - most of whom, 10-deep around the boundary - saw little other than people's heads.
Border's Australians do not attract such crowds but, even if they are increasingly dreaming of Vegemite and surf, their lustre drew more than 12,000 spectators to this game and they responded by gaining their first victory since May over a side other than England.
The 5,000-plus present yesterday saw Kent make a brave but vain attempt at 312 in 87 overs before crumbling to defeat with an hour to spare. Their assault seemed doomed within its first hour, Wayne Holdsworth and Steve Waugh reducing Kent to 29 for 3, but Graham Cowdrey and Trevor Ward restored the challenge and their own confidence with a 129-run partnership.
Although Ward is destroying Sunday League attacks, he averages 27 in the Championship. Having made six in an hour, he attacked Brendon Julian to make 69, his second-best score of the season. As Ward did so poorly in Perth grade cricket last year that he was dropped, Julian must have been startled when he was hit for 39 in three overs, mainly by Ward pulling and square driving him.
Cowdrey, while failing to match his father's match-winning show against the tourists here 18 years ago, reached his first half-century of a miserable season before being run out the last ball before tea. That came 10 runs after Ward had been caught at slip off the fourth chance he had offered and meant the end of Kent's chances although they perservered to the end.
Victory earned the Australians their fifth pounds 2,000 cheque from Tetley Bitter and Steve Waugh pounds 250 as man of the match. That doubled his winnings from a bet with an Australian journalist that Mark Taylor would not take two wickets on tour.
Taylor - who also won pounds 100 from the journalist - bowled Richard Davis behind his legs with his fourth ball. It was his maiden first-class wicket and followed a solitary success in the match against the Minor Counties. This led to wild celebrations which were repeated when the 12th man Paul Reiffel delivered the winnings.
Davis, incidentally, was the man Tim May hit for his first ever six here four years ago, winning Tim Zoehrer pounds 600 off Dean Jones.
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