Pak caved in to our game-plan — Waugh

JUNE 21: "We strangled Pakistan,'' said the victorious australian skipper steve waugh after leading his team to a magnificent eight-...

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JUNE 21: "We strangled Pakistan,” said the victorious australian skipper steve waugh after leading his team to a magnificent eight-wicket victory over pakistan in the world cup final here today.

Waugh said Pakistan caved in to their “definite game plan” and commended his teammates for giving a stupendous display of total cricket.

Waugh, who was also a member of Australia’s 1987 Cup winning team, said: “Fortunately, we played perhaps the best we have in the last few months. Today everything came good and all of us felt 100 percent confident.”

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On his game plan, Waugh said: “I told the guys the best chance we had was if we hustled a few of their top batsmen out. We wanted to convert half chances and but for one dropped chance, we succeeded in doing exactly that.”

He, however, was reluctant to say what decision he would have taken had he won the toss. “I would have been reluctant to decide either way. There is always something for bowlers in the morning and besides, it had rained just before start.”

Man-of-the-match Shane Warne said it has been the best week of his life.

“There have been many highs in my life, like winning the Ashes here and beating West Indies away in 1995 but this has to be the most amazing week of my life,” the leg-spinner, who completed 200 wickets in One-Day Internationals in bagging four for 33 said.

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Waugh also described this win as best win of his career. “It has to be the best win in sense that we had to win seven matches in a row and these were matches against tougher sides.”

On electing to bat first, Pakistan skipper Wasim Akram said the decision was collective. “It was collectively decided before the start of the game,” he said. But he could not explain his team’s pathetic display in the field. “I still feel youngsters of the pakistan team must be applauded the way they played in this entire tournament. Just to pick them for today’s performance would not be fair. Just reaching the final is a big achievement.”

Commenting on his team’s poor batting display, Akram said it was entirely due to Warne’s brilliance. “He was terrific and showed he is the best. I would repeat he is the best leg-spinner of the world.”

“We did not start off badly in that we were 40 for two at one stage. But Warne was good. People have been writing him off but he showed he is the best in the business.”

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Akram, who played his fourth World Cup, said he had no plans to retire just now.

Waugh-celebrations short-lived

SYDNEY: The Joy of the Waugh twins at winning cricket’s World Cup turned to sadness today when their beloved grandfather died.

Edward, 89, died within hours of Australia winning cricket’s biggest prize.

News of his passing in a northern New South Wales hospital reached his son Rodger, father of the twins, in Sydney at 7 am (0130 IST) today.

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Steve and Mark Waugh had vowed to win the Cup for their ailing `pop’, but never got the chance to share their triumph with him.

Steve’s wife Lynette broke the news to them in London by telephone, Rodger said.

“I’ve just heard from the boys and they’re very upset,” Rodger Waugh told reporters. “It has mucked their plans up. It has put a damper on everything.”

When Mark Waugh scored a century against Zimbabwe in an earlier round match he dedicated it to his grandfather, who `hasn’t missed a ball in the boy’s first class cricketing career over the past 12 or 13 years.’