End of Australian dominance in world cricket!

2003 World Cup Final – It was India v/s Australia.

I get a thunder bolt through my spine even now when I think about that match! Ricky Ponting and his boys literally torn apart the star studded Indian team by massive attack from the word go! I couldn’t take the fact that Australians were playing a final match and that even for a World Cup! They never been under pressure, Gilly started hitting every ball as if that is his farewell match and there were no second thought about his hittings; no bad ball and no good balls, all of them are for him to hit! Zaheer Khan succumbed under tremendous pressure; he was on receiving end from both openers Gilchrist and Heydan. Soon Ganguly ran short of ideas, he brought the spinners early to prevent the run flow, I still remember watching the match like an irritated wild animal in the cage, couldn’t sit in one place! Somehow Sourav’s move to bring the spinners early did the trick. Aussies 2/125. Captain Ricky Ponting came out to bat with Damien Martyn.

Ponting toyed the Indian bowlers with 8 towering sixes and 4 fours to score 140 runs from 121 balls, he dispatched the most applauded Indian bowling line up over the fence in fearsome regularity and incredible command – 8 sixes! The most from one batsman in any World Cup final match at the time! Martyn with a broken thumb scored 88 runs from 84 balls with 7 fours and 1 six, completed the partnership of 234 runs – an Australian record in one-day cricket! When the tempest settled down the Australian total was 359 for 2 wickets! A run rate of 7.18 runs per over was their second highest ever in ODI history!

I totally convinced that Australians got that extra supremacy and fighting spirit to beat any team in the world, the word “pressure “ was missing from their dictionary. India’s colossal run chase was made even more difficult after the trump card Sachin Tendulkar got out in the first over. Then it was a mare formality for India to give up for 234! All out in 39.2 overs! Emphatic victory of Australia by record margin in world cup final underlined their dominance in World Cricket. Ponting fetched man of the match award and Sachin Tendulkar was named player of the series.

I kept wondering those days, there were no real threat for Australians, they are in totally different level all together compare to other cricketing nations.

Everything which had the beginning should have an end; this is the rule of nature. Ironically Indians are the one showed the world; Australian vulnerability after losing few of their world class players from the list. Kumble’s men beat Australia in controversial test to begin with. It is hard to digest the fact that nowadays Australia is losing the matches more than they win! Finally they lost to England in legendary Ashes series to get hammered the last nail on their coffin!

What went wrong? How could winning graph of a team decline so badly after those consistent performances for a decade or so?

Australia always played like a team, there were at least three players who clicked in each and every game, if one fails another one step ups and make sure to score enough run on the board or take those crucial wickets in most critical junctures unlike most of the other teams. For example for a long time India was depending completely on Sachin Tendulkar, a dummy god of billion people in India failed very rarely in those days but unfortunately most of them were in vital final matches! Brilliant Brian Lara from West Indies was another example. On other hand Australia was with full of players not stars, if not Gilly then it is Hayden, if not Ponting then Hussey… the list continues.

Now Australia had shrunk in to a phase where everything is their captain Ricky Ponting. You can easily spot out that Aussies is depending heavily on Ricky Ponting’s batting in recent times, if he fails to deliver Aussies struggles to save the game. It is Ponting’s inconsistency that sealed England’s victory. After scoring 150 in second test match he couldn’t pull up the socks. A great attacking batsman that he is, having a huge impact on team Australia is invariable. I am knocking down the points of critics over the team selection; it is not team selection that put an end to the most victorious team in the world but a captain who shouldered great weight of responsibility, lack of talented players to come up and fill the shoes of those legends who retired recently, top of all drained out ideas of a captain on the field simply because he is not just used to be in losing situations!

I feel Australia is still a team to reckon with. It is hard to beat them even after revealing their susceptibility. But how long will they take to create another Gill Christ, Mathew Hayden or McGrath? This is the question worth a million dollar!