Johnson picked up the man-of-the-match award after his five-wicket haul

Mitchell Johnson took five wickets as Australia wrapped up a comfortable 149-run victory over New Zealand in the first Test at the Gabba.

Johnson made light work of the Black Caps batting order after Simon Katich had scored an unbeaten century on Saturday to put the hosts in control.

New Zealand resumed on 143-6, still needing 184 runs to win.

But once Daniel Vettori was dismissed wickets tumbled as the tourists failed to last an hour on the fourth day.

Andrew Symonds pulled off a one-handed catch to spell the end of the Kiwi captain's stay after he had initially showed some fight with Ross Taylor.

Taylor started the day on 67 but after Johnson struck to deny Vettori, he too fell to the paceman in his next over after posting a defiant 75.

I thought we bowled very well, we fielded well, but our batting wasn't great. Australia captain Ricky Ponting

Tim Southee cut loose as Australia closed in on victory, smashing Clark for two sixes, but the match came to an end as Chris Martin's middle stump was uprooted by Johnson to complete his man-of-the-match display.

The result was important for Australia after their 2-0 Test series defeat in India earlier this month, but captain Ricky Ponting said his side would not be getting carried away and says there is plenty of room for improvement.

"I think we were a fair way off playing our best cricket, both teams struggled with the bat on that wicket," he said.

"(But) after halfway through the second day, it probably wasn't a bad surface to bat on at all.

"I thought we bowled very well, we fielded well, but our batting wasn't great.

"We've done what we needed to do, we had a number of outstanding individual performances in the game, but at the moment we're just lacking that real consistency through the group that we need to play our best cricket."

606: DEBATE Your thoughts on Australia's victory

"We started pretty well with the ball and got Australia into the position we wanted, but if we reflect back, Clarke in the first innings and Katich in the second, two very impressive innings and probably the difference between the two sides," he said.

Vettori is also looking for more from his batsmen as Taylor top-scored in both innings for the Black Caps, but failed to go on and record big scores as their top order suffered back-to-back collapses.

"It's been a trend for us for a long time now, not getting one or two guys to stand up and score that hundred or even that 70 or 80 continuously," Vettori said .

"It's something we're continually trying to work on, we've got a youngish batting line-up but we're still trying to get results out of them."

Match referee Chris Broad later fined Australia's players 15% of their match fees for a slow over-rate, after they were found to be three overs short of their target when time allowances were taken into consideration.

As captain, Ponting was fined 30% of his match fee.

The second Test of the two-match series starts on Friday 28 November in Adelaide before Australia host South Africa and New Zealand entertain West Indies.

The world's three leading news agencies are not covering the series due to a dispute with Cricket Australia.

Reuters, Agence France-Presse and Associated Press have suspended all coverage of the 2008-09 season.

Their photographers and reporters did not supply material from within the ground. As a result, we cannot use pictures from the current match.

E-mail this to a friend

Printable version