ICC Champions Trophy: 'waste of Time' Thrashing Angers Ponting

The serious cricket in the Champions Trophy begins on Thursday, when Australia meet New Zealand for a place in the last four. For the International Cricket Council, desperate for its brainchild to justify its billing as the mini-World Cup, the match cannot come quickly enough.

Australia's demolition job of the USA yesterday in less than 2 hours was the fifth stroll in the park in five games since the competition got off to an underwhelming start on Friday and it left Australia's captain Ricky Ponting in scathing mood.

"We didn't get a whole lot out of this match," he said. "Hopefully the USA did, otherwise it would have been a bit of a waste of time."

The way the American team piled into the Australian dressing-room afterwards may have shown a willingness to learn, although such was the gulf between the sides that they might have been collecting autographs.

"We want to be tested by the best teams all the time and I'm not sure we were tested too much today," said Ponting. "I'm not convinced that the Champions Trophy and the World Cup is the place for these sides to perform. I think they have to dominate in other tournaments for longer periods of time before they play at this level."

USA are the only side in this competition without official one-day status and they qualified after winning the ICC Six Nations Challenge by 0.028 of a run. Pipping Scotland, Namibia and the United Arab Emirates on net run-rate is one thing. Facing Brett Lee and Jason Gillespie on a seaming English pitch livened up by rain is something else.

The game was over by 1.30pm, 45 minutes before the scheduled break between innings. USA had been blown away in 24 overs for 65, the 12th-lowest score in one-day international history, before Australia knocked off the runs for the loss of Matthew Hayden in 7.5 overs, which was the third-quickest run chase. When Adam Gilchrist swung Rashid Zia over midwicket for six, it was game, set and mismatch.

"The idea was to get the run-rate up higher than New Zealand's," said Ponting, who had opted for a four-man pace attack in the hope of winning the toss and letting his seamers loose. "And we've done that."

It was ruthless, perhaps, but necessary. Should rain ruin the clash of the antipodeans at The Oval on Thursday, Australia's superior run-rate will see them through to the last four, where they could meet England.

Exactly what games like this tell us about Australia is unclear and there was little time to shed light on the USA team either. They were without the injured Clayton Lambert, their one player with Test experience, and Steve Massiah alone reached double figures. The candy was stolen by Michael Kasprowicz, who dealt with the middle order in a spell of four for six in 16 balls, and Gillespie, who rounded up the tail to finish with four for 15.

"I just told them to hold their heads high," said the USA captain Richard Staple. "We can only improve. There are positives in that we can learn from teams like that."

But this particular bunch of players possesses neither time nor pulling power. Massiah and Leon Romero are the only players under 30 and Romero is the sole American-born player in a squad full of Caribbean and Asian ex-pats, hardly ideal for convincing a famously insular sporting nation that cricket is where the future of their youngsters lies.

"One of the things we wanted to do was to introduce the sport to a national audience," said Staple. "But we were just overwhelmed." Presumably the spectators begged to differ.