MELBOURNE (Australia) — Australia won their fifth World Cup, out of the 11 tournaments that have been staged, with contemptuous ease. New Zealand were brushed aside by seven wickets with 16.5 overs to spare.
Australia overwhelmed New Zealand to win the World Cup for a fifth time at an ecstatic Melbourne Cricket Ground. New Zealand lost influential captain Brendon McCullum to the fifth ball of the match and were bowled out for 183.
Grant Elliott resisted with 83, while Mitchell Starc, Mitchell Johnson and James Faulkner shared eight wickets.
Australia rarely looked troubled, sealing a seven-wicket win in 33.1 overs, with captain Michael Clarke scoring 74 and Steve Smith 56 not out.
Clarke, in his final one-day international, was given a standing ovation by the record 93,000 crowd and welcomed by his team-mates on the boundary when he was bowled by Matt Henry with eight required.
He was part of the Australia team that last lifted the trophy in 2007, with this success extending their record for most World Cups won. No other team has more than two.
Magnificent pace bowling first of all stifled the challenge of New Zealand and then blew them out of the water as the last seven wickets fell for 33 runs from the start of the second power play. Only Grant Elliott, the hero of the Auckland semi-final, who made 83, and Ross Taylor who sweated blood for 40, the pair adding 111 for the fourth wicket, had any answer to the Mitchells, Starc and Johnson, and James Faulkner, the trio of left arm pacemen, who shared eight of the wickets, Faulkner receiving the man of the match award for 3-36, including a spell of 3-15 that changed the course of the game, and Starc the man of the tournament for 22 wickets at a paltry 10 runs apiece.
