The Kangaroos being curried again - Part 2 - Opinion
Continued from Part 1...
Similarly, bowling performances have also been patchy, and the days seem to have gone by when http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Pakistan-c755, not a single Australian batsman managed to decimate
the figures of some of the thriftiest of Pakistani bowlers. Their opponents had an attack which was potent, but not threatening in terms of the pacers that they have had in their repertoire. Towering sixes or boundaries being scored with brazen regularity
have become a thing of the past.
The question for cricket fans thus, remains as to whether they had come to expect too much from a team which lacks flare and flamboyance. http://www.senore.com/Cricket/South-Africa-c757 in 2003, are definitely going through a rebuilding process, yet unlike the African nation,
they have become beatable in the process by quite a few teams who would not have fancied their chances before the World Cup. The manner, in which they succumbed to defeats in the UK for example, would be an unfair assessment as they were dealing with a team
that was traditionally strong at home. The series against the http://www.senore.com/Cricket/West-Indies-c760 in the Caribbean on the other hand, was a grand example of how this Australian line up lacked the ability to silence their oppositions and play them out of the game, as they had done
so often in the past.
Another factor which has slowly crept into the Australian team is the overt reliance on a few players to perform and win games single handedly. For a side which was historically one of the best, this is indeed a damning development. This once star-studded
side had looked at its best when the entire team contributed on the field, whether it has been with the willow or with the ball in hand. These days, a victory is almost entirely about http://www.senore.com/Cricket/MEK-Hussey-c1942
batting with a penchant for rescuing his team out of trouble. Beyond this, Australia’s lower middle order looks dry and fallible against top quality bowling. Players such as http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Daniel-Christian-c1308 still need to cover significant amount of day light
before they could assert themselves as permanent fixtures in the lineup. In light of this, Australia can easily be defeated, if some of their main guns are dislodged early, and teams such as Pakistan would acknowledge this fact and prepare accordingly in the
lead up to important games.
Australia needs a revival and an urgent one at that. Star studded performers are limited to just a handful in a team which has traditionally been one of the super powers in World cricket. Their decline in the Test Arena, where they lost the Ashes twice in
a row along with unimpressive performances against various oppositions, is a prime example of how reliance on a few players has acted to their detriment, and permeated into the Test arena as well. In an Ashes Test match at Brisbane, http://www.senore.com/Cricket/England-c56013 managed to score
517 for 1 in their first innings, which highlighted the ragged nature of the Australian bowling and the manner in which they approached a format in which they were invincible at one time.
In the ODI format however, Australia is beginning to lose color badly. It is a sad state of affairs, but the truth is that if a side such as Pakistan could get it right against them for once, then ‘curried’ Kangaroos would become a regular item on the menu.
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