Australia plan to cramp Chris Gayle

Australia are confident they have found Chris Gayle's weakness after he miscued an attempted pull from his fifth delivery in West Indies' 113-run loss on Sunday. The short ball from Doug Bollinger was too close to Gayle's body for him to comfortably swing and it is a tactic the Australians believe will frustrate Gayle early in his innings.

Bollinger's left-arm angle is especially useful in giving Gayle no width outside off stump and the plan also worked in the first innings of the Adelaide Test, when Gayle was caught behind off Bollinger trying to cut a ball too close to his body. Shane Watson said Australia had no doubt that denying Gayle width was the best way to remove him cheaply.

"That's a big key to him," Watson said after the Melbourne game. "You don't really want to give him room to be able to swing his arms. Dougie bowled beautifully to him. It's always going to be pretty difficult with Dougie bowling exactly where he wants to with a bit of bounce and a little bit of swing.

"That is our plan, to be able to keep him tucked up and hope that he might hit a pull shot or something in the air, or go for one shot too many. He is a key wicket so we've got to make sure we're really on our game every time we bowl to him."

Gayle is always the big wicket for West Indies' opponents but that is even more so with the absence of Shivnarine Chanderpaul, Ramnaresh Sarwan and Dwayne Bravo. Gayle said "thought the shot was on" but perhaps he could have given himself a few more sighters before such an ambitious swing.

He had already been lucky to get away with two similar strokes, one that flew just over midwicket's head and one that was bottom-edged past the wicketkeeper for four. It was the third time in three matches - two Tests and one ODI - that Bollinger had removed Gayle.

"I knew how to bowl to him," Bollinger said. "We tried to bowl really tight to him and everyone knows that he plays his shots. I'm just happy to get him out. We know how quick he can score and how hard he hits the ball.

"I think just bowling really tight to him and being really consistent with him because he is a match-winner, everyone knows that, and just trying to get him out. If you get him out early it's a massive boost because you don't know what he's going to do. Especially if they're chasing a target it's a massive thing to do."

However, Australia's plans to Gayle haven't always worked out - he scored two centuries against them in the recent Tests and was the Player of the Series. Notably, Gayle was the Man of the Match in the only game Australia have failed to win this summer, the drawn Test in Adelaide, which is also the venue of Tuesday's second ODI.