IT may not exactly have been a case of winning One For The Gipper but the West Indies gave coach Malcolm Marshall the best possible pick-me-up as they kept their World Cup hopes burning.
Ridley Jacobs was the man with the biggest spoonful of tonic on a day he won't forget for a while. The West Indies wicketkeeper equalled the World Cup record with five catches as New Zealand were rattled out for 156 in 48.1 overs, their lowest World Cup score.
Jacobs then took the biscuit with a World Cup personal best score of 80 as West Indies dusted off the target with little alarm and five overs to spare.
It was a game the West Indies had to win and one which would have punched New Zealand's ticket through to the Super Six stage of the competition.
Defeat for the West Indies would have left them almost certainly contemplating an early return home but, after winning the toss and putting the Kiwis in, it was New Zealand lambs to the slaughter as the West Indies' old warriors Curtly Ambrose and Courtney Walsh went into battle swinging their swords again.
Ambrose struck in the second over when Nathan Astle gave Jacobs the first of his fistful of catches and, with the West Indies' pace bat-tery taking full advantage of the early condi-tions, the game was over as a contest after 17 overs.
Roger Twose had led New Zealand back from a similar situation to beat Australia but, when he fell with just 31 runs on the board, there was little prospect of a repeat. The West Indies bowlers held sway and it was 21 overs before the Kiwis registered their first boundary.
Adam Parore and Chris Harris briefly raised the flag with 50 in ten overs but former Trojans bowler Merv Dillon took key middle and lower order wickets and it was all wrapped up for 156.
New Zealand attempted to keep things tight although the West Indies were in no rush as they winkled out Sherwin Campbell and Jimmy Adams before 50 was put on the board.
But in came Brian Lara and the Prince delighted the crowd with some delightful strokes in his 36 out of a 72-run partnership with Jacobs which took his side within sight of the post.
Jacobs saw it through from soup to nuts, his 131-ball 80 decorated by a soaring six and eight fours which rightly won him the man-of- the-match award.
Gordon Greenidge celebrated Bangladesh's first World Cup victory - and then claimed the country are light years away from achieving full Test status.
Bangladesh defied a chronic start to record a 22-run triumph over Scotland in Edinburgh in the Group B clash of the minnows.
It was a result which deflated the home supporters who held such high hopes when their team had reduced Bangladesh to 26-5.
But Minhajul Abedin turned the game with a fine unbeaten 68 that elevated Bangladesh to 185-9.
But once again the home side were let down by an inept top-order display as they slipped to 8-3 and then 49-5 - hardly the most encouraging platform from which to build, and there is a limit to the number of times Gavin Hamilton, who made 63 before being cruelly run-out at the non-striker's end, can be relied upon to dig his teammates out of a hole.
Given the Yorkshire all-rounder's performances to date, it could even be that an England future so dreamily spoken of 12 months ago will turn into reality by the end of the summer.
Captain George Salmond must also quickly find the form which has won admiring glances south of the border.
Converted for the new archive on 25 January 2001. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.
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