Hayden - could be set for a rare failure.
MATT TO FINISH ON A LOW NOTE
By Jonathan Turner
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It's the final everyone wanted as Australia and Sri Lanka, clearly the best two sides in the tournament, go head-to-head in Barbados on Saturday.
There's no doubt that the Aussies fully deserve to be hot favourites because they've done absolutely nothing wrong all tournament.
Their big guns at the top of the order have fired for the duration - Matthew Hayden tops the run charts with 621, with skipper Ricky Ponting in third on 502.
Their dominance is even more pronounced on the bowling front - with three of their attack in the top four leading wicket takers (Glenn McGrath 25, Shaun Tait 23 and Brad Hogg 20).
It's all meant a perfect record of ten wins out of ten - and every single one of them by an emphatic margin.
And there were no signs of burnout in the semi-finals - just the opposite in fact as they crushed South Africa by seven wickets.
Indeed they've barely had an anxious moment in the tournament. About the only ones that spring to mind are when South Africa were 160 without loss chasing 377-6 in the group stages, and then when Kevin Pietersen and Ian Bell were cruising at 164-2 as England looked set to post a 300+ total in Antigua.
However the sobering reality of those two matches was that the Aussies eventually won them by 83 runs and seven wickets respectively so they weren't exactly close calls.
It's therefore a fairly hopeless task looking for signs of vulnerability - and about the only two areas we've come up with are both as a direct consequence of their success!
Firstly, the fact that the support batsmen haven't had a great deal of time at the crease. 'Mr Cricket' Mike Hussey has just 87 runs to his name from 10 matches, Shane Watson 142 and Andrew Symonds 166.
However it's not as if that trio are exactly struggling - Watson hasn't been out yet and has a strike rate of 173, Symonds is averaging over 55 and has a strike rate of just under 100 while Hussey, possibly the one concern, still has a one-day average of just under 60.
The second straw to be clutched by Sri Lanka supporters is the fact that it could be argued Australia haven't yet been battle-hardened by a close contest.
Whereas Sri Lanka have responded superbly to adversity throughout the tournament - think of their heroic effort against South Africa when Lasith Malinga took four wickets in four balls, or their nailbiting win over England - the Aussies haven't found themselves in anything resembling that sort of situation.
Clearly they can only beat what's put in front of them but it has to be a slight worry because John Buchanan's side have looked flaky at times when the pressure has been on in the last 12 months or so.
The four highest successful chases in one-day internationals have all come against Australia - and three of those have been since the start of last year.
And it's also worth reminding ourselves that they looked equally invincible in the Commonwealth Bank Series back in January - with Buchanan even bemoaning the fact that they weren't being stretched - only to get mugged 2-0 in the final by England.
In truth though there doesn't look too much wrong with them at the moment and it's going to take an epic display from Sri Lanka if they are to upset the odds.
There are plenty of positives for Mahela Jayawardene's side.
They are highly unlikely to buckle under the pressure as South Africa did in the semis, they are the one side with a bowling attack that's arguably better than Australia's and they also have a relatively secret weapon in the shape of Malinga.
We'll deal with each of those areas in turn, starting with Sri Lanka's ability to deal with the occasion.
Unlike the Aussies - whose 44 for two on Wednesdaywas virtually their most 'perilous' batting position of the tournament so far - Sri Lanka have lost early wickets on a regular basis.
They were supposedly too dependent on Sanath Jayasuriya at the top of the order but when he was dismissed for just one in the semi-finals there was no sign of panic.
Instead skipper Jayawardene played one of the best-paced innings the World Cup has ever seen, made all the more impressive by the circumstances. Probably the only other man in world cricket with the talent, temperament and poise capable of matching it is his Aussie counterpart Ponting, which again shows the sort of level Sri Lanka are approaching.
And there's the strong feeling that there will always be one of the Sri Lankans to play that key role. The top five in the order have all scored 292 runs or more and Upul Tharanga, the only man who hadn't looked in decent nick, roared back to form against the Kiwis.
The bowling is the real strength though, with Chaminda Vaas and Malinga a lethal opening pairing who invariably strike early, backed up by the best one-day slow bowling partnership around in Murali and Jayasuriya.
The added bonus is that Australia have never faced Malinga in a ODI and the only time he's played against them in Test matches were in his first two appearances for Sri Lanka back in 2004 when he took ten wickets in the two games.
With such a distinctive action that's got to be a real plus point for Sri Lanka's chances and underlines the wisdom of resting him, Vaas and Murali when the two sides met in the Super Eights.
And that brings us to our first recommendation on the final - the somewhat controversial call to go low on Hayden's performance.
For all his heroics in this tournament - all the more praiseworthy given the broken toe he suffered in the Chappell-Hadlee Trophy - he still looks vulnerable to the ball arrowed in at his pads, exactly the sort of deliveries that should come from Vaas and Malinga.
The big left hander has been dismissed by Vaas in three of the previous six games, failing to pass the 20 mark in any of them.
Throwing Malinga into the mix should make it twice as difficult for the Queenslander - who can virtually be guaranteed to try and assert himself - and his player performance quote (1pt per run and 10pts per catch) of under/over 46.5 is ripe for going low at 5/6.
This would be far riskier on the spreads where another hundred would wipe out all our match-by-match profits on the tournament but on the fixed odds front it's well worth an interest.
We're also going to get with Ponting to outscore Hayden, again at 5/6.
For while Hayden averages a couple of runs fewer against Sri Lanka compared to his overall one-day average, it's a different story with Ponting.
He's up nearly seven at just over 50 per innings against Sri Lanka - and that figure is getting better and better.
He's stroked 723 runs at 72.3 in his last 13 matches against them, passing 50 no fewer than eight times and racking up three hundreds.
As we mentioned in our semi-final preview he also seems to thrive the higher the stakes and it would also be no surprise to see him make a bold bid for the man of the match award, which he snaffled in the 2003 final.
But getting back to whether it will be Ponting or Jayawardene who lifts the World Cup and we're fearful that our 15/2 pre-tournament tips Sri Lanka are going to fall at the final hurdle.
The balance of power is clearly with the Aussies but Sri Lanka did beat them in the 1996 final and definitely have claims.
Few people will know the Aussie team better than coach Tom Moody and it could yet prove to be a masterstroke of his to leave Malinga, Vaas and Murali on the sidelines inthe Super Eights clash.
He's definitely taken Sri Lanka to the next level as a one-day outfit because their fielding which was a real weak spot as recently as last summer is now outstanding thanks to the work of Moody and Trevor Penney.
And while their head-to-head record against Australia isn't great, it's still better than virtually anyone else's, with four wins from the last 12.
However it's the news on the pitch at the Kensington Oval pitch which ultimately tilts the balance too heavily in Australia's favour for us to predict an upset.
Had this game been played on one of the slower and lower tracks that have characterised this tournament then we'd be seriously hopeful that Muralitharan and Jayasuriya could prove the difference between the sides.
But by all accounts Barbados is going to be both fast and bouncy, more so than in matches which have already taken place there earlier in the tournament when the likes of Andrew Hall and Michael Vaughan ended up as the leading wicket-takers.
And if that's the case then that would definitely be in Australia's favour because it should accentuate the threat of their pacemen rather than help the slingy action of Malinga.
The hope is that Sri Lanka can at least make this a contest - unlike either of the two semi-finals or any game involving Australia - but from a betting point of view it's hard to quibble with the odds and we'll stick with the advice on Hayden and Ponting rather than recommend a bet just because it's the World Cup final.
Preview posted at 1430BST on 26/04/2007.
