KEY POINTS:
Australia are in danger of crashing out of the Twenty20 cricket World Cup at the first hurdle after being stunned by minnows Zimbabwe in their opening group match.
Zimbabwe beat Australia by five wickets with one ball to spare at Newlands, leaving Ricky Ponting's men the task of beating England tomorrow to stand any chance of progressing past the group stage.
Even then that may not be enough, with net run-rate set to decide which two teams go through to the Super Eights stage, should all three teams finish on equal points.
Ponting admitted his team was outplayed and the top order was "diabolical".
"It is a mental thing for us, we have to start respecting the game a bit more and thinking what we have to do," he said.
"We have been outplayed today, no doubt about that."
Zimbabwe bowled well to restrict Australia to 138 for nine wickets on a slow pitch after Ponting won the toss and elected to bat.
Opener Brendon Taylor then piloted the Africans to a memorable victory, scoring an unbeaten 60, with valuable middle order support from Hamilton Masakadza (27).
Zimbabwe needed 12 off the final over from Nathan Bracken.
Taylor gave them the perfect start, paddling a full delivery past short fine leg to the boundary from the first ball.
They eventually whittled the equation down to four from the final two deliveries, before sparking wild celebrations when Bracken's penultimate delivery flicked Taylor's pad and flew away to the boundary.
Stuart Clark made a desperate attempt to prevent the winning runs on the fine leg boundary, but came up just short.
* New Zealand easily accounted for Kenya, wining by nine wickets in their opening cup match.
- AAP
