Opener David Warner blazed 75 from 41 balls to set up Australia's 31-run win over the West Indies Friday and complete a 2-0 series sweep in a warm-up for this month's T20 Cricket World Cup. The defending T20 World Cup champions Australia won the series-opening match on the Gold Coast by three wickets with one ball to spare Wednesday and followed up with a lop-sided victory at the Gabba. Warner's 23rd T20 half century and Tim David's 42 from 20 deliveries propelled Australia to a total of 178-7 after being sent in to bat. Alzarri Joseph led the West Indies attack with 3-21 off four overs, including the wickets of Cameron Green (1), Steve Smith (17) and Matt Wade (16). For Australia, left-arm paceman Mitchell Starc snared four wickets, including one in the first over, to restrict the West Indies to 147-8 in reply. Read: 6 must watch T20I series before ICC Twenty20 World Cup 2022 Johnson Charles (29), Brandon King (23) and Akeal Hosein (25) made starts but were unable to build momentum as the Australian bowling attack took regular wickets on a bouncy pitch in Brisbane. Australia will play England in three T20s, starting in Perth Sunday, before opening the T20 World Cup on October 22 against New Zealand. The West Indies will play two warm-up matches in Melbourne next week before beginning the preliminary round of the T20 World Cup on October 17 against Scotland.

With the job half done, Bangladesh are all set to take on New Zealand from Sunday in the second Test of the series aiming to finish the job — to win their first-ever Test series against the Blackcaps. The Tigers, who had no win in New Zealand despite playing a total of 32 matches across all the formats, won the first Test of the series in Tauranga by eight wickets. Along with becoming their first-ever win in New Zealand, this win ended the drought of Bangladesh of not winning a Test against any of the top-five Test teams away from home. Experts said it was one of the best things that Bangladesh have done in their cricketing history, though Masrhafe Bin Mortaza, the former captain of the Tigers is not a big fan of this idea. He rather said ‘not one of the best’, it actually is ‘the best-ever win’ of Bangladesh in cricket regardless of the formats. Read: Bangladesh National Men's Cricket Team Schedules for 2022 Bangladesh allrounder Shakib Al Hasan echoed Mashrafe. To him, this win proved those who used to think that Bangladesh is unable to do big things sans the service of the big players wrong. Shakib pointed to the absence of himself and Tamim Iqbal in this series. While Tamim was left out due to an injury, Shakib skipped it citing family reasons. “Bangladesh’s media fraternity used to say that the Bangladesh team is all about some four-five players, but it is proved wrong now. The young players are also capable of doing big things if they are given adequate chances,” Shakib said recently during a media interaction in Dhaka. Bangladesh coach Russell Domingo believes the Tigers are pumped-up thanks to the win in the first match, and they are eager to create a new chapter of their history winning the second Test in a tougher condition in Christchurch which will surely offer a wicket with grass on it. Given the current stats of Bangladesh in the longer format of the sport, one might say it’s a daydream of the Tigers to aim for a series win against New Zealand— the current champions of the ICC World Test Championship. But a win with the contribution from most players of the XI changed the atmosphere of the Bangladesh team.