Batistuta hits golden patch

Gabriel Batistuta is in pole position for the World Cup's Golden Boot Award after completing the disintegration of the Jamaican defence with a second half hattrick in the Parc des Princes yesterday.

Added to his impressive strike against Japan, it has established him at the top of the scoring chart approaching the halfway stage of the championship. Ariel Ortega weighed in with two more and the scene is set for an enthralling game against Croatia in the Group decider on Friday.

The man who likened the challenge of the Jamaican coach Rene Simoes to sending out 11 men to climb the Pyrenees in slippers gave one of the more apt assessments of the championship to date on a day when the gulf in class was enormous.

To mark FIFA's Fair Play day both teams were instructed to pose for a group photograph before the start and, as it transpired, that was as close as the men from the Caribbean came to the opposition.

If not quite on the scale of their infamous Olympic bobsleigh mishap, it was still a precipitous fall for Jamaica, painful enough to reduce even the imaginative Simoes to something approaching numbed shock.

"I couldn't imagine anything like that happening after we had had got our game together in the first half," he said. "But in the end it was real enough and there are some very unhappy players back in our dressing-room."

On an afternoon more suited to cricket than football, the colourful Jamaican supporters provided the perfect backdrop as they sang their way through the opening 45 minutes.

The dimensions of the collapse which followed were such, however, that no less than Simoes, the Jamiacan support can only have viewed the last half hour as a recurring nightmare.

None of which ought detract from the performance of Argentina, who after spurning a cluster of early chances, suddenly found their rhythm to open up broad avenues through the centre of the opposing defence.

As ever, the build up was slow and methodical but once the initial gap had been created, they moved at breathtaking speed to push home the advantage. The greater achievement of their manager, Daniel Passarella, has been to instil real discipline into the side.

Here the evidence of the new regime was unmistakable. It wasn't until the 66th minute that Jose Chamot became their first player to be booked in the championship.

The Jamaicans, sadly, were less successful in negotiating the hazards of the stringent refereeing in vogue here and in injury time in the first half, Darryl Powell, introduced in one of three changes from the team beaten by Croatia, was sent off for a second bookable offence.

Whatever chance they had of scripting a minor sporting miracle disappeared in that instant and in a very real way it contributed to the indignity of the last 17 minutes when Batistuta hit the target three times, the third from a penalty.

Ortega no less than Batistuta was guilty of some terrible misses in the opening quarter, but there was nothing wrong with his finish when Juan Veron's pass gave him the chance of chipping the ball over goalkeeper Warren Barrett for the opening goal in the 31st minute.

Ten minutes into the second half, he struck again, this time after executing a precise one-two with Claudio Lopez. At that point, he looked set to become the first player to hit a hat-trick in this year's finals.

After Batistuta had chipped in with two more, Ortega's delicate skill forced Ian Goodison into a reckless tackle which ended with Norwegian referee Rene Pedersen pointing to the penalty spot. Poetic justice suggested that Ortega should take the ensuing kick, but with a paragraph of history beckoning, Batistuta was in no mood to let niceties get in the way of personal ambition.