``McGrath won it with almost the first thrust of his sword,'' wrote Christopher Martin-Jenkins in Telegraph about the much-hyped duel between Tendulkar and McGrath.

``It took him, in fact, only four balls to establish that ... he would be the master. He was utterly Australian in his confidence, authority and intensity,'' Martin-Jenkins said about the kangaroos' defeat of India by 77 runs.

Though Tendulkar failed with the bat, after many critics forecast that India would be putting too much pressure on the maestro by sending him in to open. It was Indian skipper Mohammed Azharuddin's batting, not captaincy, that was put to the sword.

``But if Azza has experienced most things during the 321 One-day games he has played for India, he can rarely have played a worse shot thanwhen he tamely parried a rising ball from McGrath to gully to leave his team paralysed on 17-4,'' England's former all-rounder Derek Pringle commented in The Independent.

Going by their previous matches in the World Cup, it would have been something of a rude shock for India's captain to come to the wicket with the scoreboard reading 12-3 and five close catchers, Pringle wrote. Pringle was quick to appreciate the kind of aggression that McGrath showed yesterday and brought out one inherent fact that might have played a big role in Australia's win, or more so in McGrath's success.

``McGrath is not afraid to risk no-balls in an effort to shake the batsmen up. In One-day cricket, anything above shoulder height is considered illegal, but McGrath knows that gifting the opposition the occasional run is nothing compared with the mental trauma that ensues after a ball has changed off a collar bone or two.''

``McGrath hissed one past Rahul Dravid's temple before having him caught behind in a photostat ofthe Tendulkar dismissal,'' Pringle wrote.

Pat Gibson of The Times said McGrath has demonstrated twice in the past week the great art of fast bowling with his summarry dismissals of Brian Lara and Sachin Tendulkar -- indisputably the two best batsmen in the world.

He criticised Indian Skipper's decision to send Tendulkar to open the innings saying: ``It was the same at The Oval yesterday, when India gambled on playing their trump card from the start. It was a fatal error. The sight of Tendulkar opening the innings was just the inspiration that McGrath needed.''

Poking fun at ``whoever coined the term `carnival' for this World Cup,'' Gibson said the person ``knew very little about cricket''. ``The time for revelry is when the Cup has been won. Until then, it is a serious business and there is no more serious cricketer in the world than McGrath.''