Australia warm up for final with unconvincing win

Hayden - set to escape official censure over allegations that he swore at a child in a guard of honour at Edgbaston on Tuesday - made a solitary run before he was caught behind fencing at Mashrafe Mortaza.

The Queensland player, who gave the young flag-wavers a conspicuously wide berth when Australia ran out to field, also dropped a routine slip catch in a Bangladesh innings that began with an alarming stutter but was resuscitated by Nafees and Mashud.

The reply was in immediate trouble thanks to Hayden’s early departure and hit two more snags when Adam Gilchrist gave himself out despite appearing to miss an attempted drive that curiously deviated out of the footholds to slip off Tapash Baisya. Khaled Mahmud then got one to nip away and had Damien Martyn neatly caught at the wicket.

Ponting, batting at three, made a fidgety start and had more than one lbw scrape before gradually finding his touch in a hard-working 95-ball innings featuring just five fours and ending with a disappointing aerial pull to deep midwicket off Mortaza.

Ponting had therefore left some work still to be done. But Clarke, with whom the captain shared an 85-run stand, buckled down for an 80-ball 50 and found an expert ‘finisher’ in Andrew Symonds who marked a return to his home ground with a match-clinching contribution towards an unbroken alliance of 86.

Nafees, the Bangladesh opener, had earlier resisted the over-ambitious shot selection favoured by most of his colleagues to provide some much-needed substance in his maiden half-century for a team put in first on a cloudy day.

The left-hander combined with Habibul Bashar and then more significantly Mashud, whose career-best batting helped to ensure a testing total was salvaged from the wreckage of 19 for three after two of the first three in the Bangladesh order had gone for ducks.

Jason Gillespie made the first incision with a length ball that took the outside edge, with Javed Omar squared up on the back foot.

Hayden’s earlier drop at slip therefore cost nothing, and Brett Lee put himself in the wickets column anyway when Tushar Imran paid for aiming across the line to be bowled first ball.

Mohammad Ashraful’s response to the usual crisis was a four-ball microcosm of his gung-ho summer, replete with a memorable pull for six from a near 90mph Lee delivery barely short of a length and then the demolition of his stumps when he missed a fast and low full toss next up.

Nafees is the only top-order batsman who has convinced for Bangladesh and he impressed again as a solid bet for the future.

Just the occasional faulty waft outside off-stump betrayed him in a 116-ball stay that brought six boundaries, and he was not tempted into anything foolish even as Habibul was dominating with a cameo 30 which included four fours in one Lee over.

The captain’s counter-attack ended when Shane Watson found otherwise absent life in the pitch to have a blameless Habibul gloving a catch high and fast behind to the acrobatic Gilchrist.

Aftab Ahmed was much more culpable, and Nafees could be forgiven for wondering what his team-mates were doing when his partner tried to thrash the first ball after drinks out of the ground only to edge Michael Kasprowicz behind with only seven to his name.

Help was at hand, though, in the shape of Mashud whose sensible approach was the antidote required to the previous gung-ho batting.

In the end it was Nafees who fell, caught behind trying to deflect a single off Watson to give Gilchrist his fourth of five victims and end a partnership of 94 which had laid a platform for the addition of 72 runs in the last ten overs.

Mashud’s reward for his mid-innings good sense was a 90-ball half-century, containing just one of the four fours he eventually managed in a Bangladesh total which was enough to give the Australians a good work-out but not a serious scare.