Aussies take Champions Trophy again

Shane Watson scored a second successive century as Australia scored a comprehensive six wicket win over New Zealand to retain the ICC Champions Trophy at Centurion Park in South Africa .

New Zealand severely depleted already suffered a big blow before the start of play when Captain and leading performer Daniel Vettori was forced out of the game with a hamstring injury.

They still managed to score 200 for 9 with Martin Guptil making 40, Neil Broom 37, and James Franklin 33 against Nathan Hauritz's 3 for 37 and Brett Lee's 2 for 45.

The Kiwis then tried hard to defend their small score and had Australia at 6 for 2 in the fourth over but Watson who hit 10 fours and 4 sixes in his unbeaten 105 and Cameron White shared in a match winning start of 128.

White later fell for 62 to Kyle Mills who had 3 for 27 but Watson hit two sixes in a row to end the match.

Watson took his second man of the match award but the man of the series award went to winning Captain Ricky Ponting who scored the most runs in the tournament, 288 runs in four games at an average of 72.

"I though the bowlers were terrific early on as restricting New Zealand to 200 runs was a great effort. Losing two early wickets was set us back a little bit by Cameron White and Shane Watson kept control of things really well after that," said Ponting.

Stand-in New Zealand Captain Brendon McCullum later agreed that Vettori's absence was a big blow as his team was about 50 runs short.

"It was a huge blow but we still believed that we had the quality of players to compete and win against Australia and we did manage to put them under pressure. Unfortunately, we were a few runs short with the bat which was due to the brilliant way that they bowled.

"We still thought we had a chance when we got the early wickets but Watson played brilliantly and took the game away from us," said " McCullum