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Cricket: Australia Sets Out With Expectations Eroded
By Huw Richards
The Australian team sets out on its long journey to the West Indies and the Cricket World Cup on Wednesday without its key fast bowler and, still more important, suddenly shorn of its aura of the No. 1 team in the world.
The bowler is Brett Lee. He was ruled out over the weekend after injuring his ankle in a training session during Australia's recent series of three one-day internationals in New Zealand.
Lee is Australia's quickest bowler, one of a handful in the world to have been timed delivering the ball at 100 miles, or 160 kilometers, an hour. He was the dominant bowler of the later states of the 2003 World Cup. His ferocious spells against New Zealand and Sri Lanka were decisive in Australia's advance to the final, where it beat India.
Lee's place goes to Stuart Clark, who is slower and extremely accurate — not always an asset in one-day games, where accuracy too readily becomes predictability, allowing the batsman to play premeditated attacking shots.
The sudden loss of Lee came during a month when Australia, almost as suddenly, lost the aura of invincibility it has carried for the best part of a decade. During that time it has won the last two World Cups. After a run of losses to England and then New Zealand it has surrendered its seemingly permanent place at the top of the International Cricket Council's rankings for one-day international matches, the format in which the World Cup is played. It had been No. 1 since the rankings were introduced in October 2002.
Australia's place at the top of the rankings has gone to South Africa. There is an echo of history here. It was South Africa that briefly displaced Australia from the top of the rankings for five-day tests, the older and more prestigious format for the game, at the start of 2003.
That was something of a statistical fluke. Nobody doubted that, whatever the standings said, Australia was the best team and it quickly reclaimed first place.
This is different. It reflects a gradual decline over the past year, one that suddenly became precipitous in the last month. Australia has lost six one-day matches out of its last seven. It dropped three in a row to previously hapless England, which thereby retrieved the Commonwealth Bank series trophy from an otherwise abysmal Ashes tour. It then lost three more to New Zealand.
The losses in New Zealand were particularly shattering. Australia opened the series by suffering its first 10 wicket loss ever — the biggest margin of defeat possible for a team batting first.
Australia again batted first in the next two games and made huge scores, but its bowlers could not prevent the Kiwis' mounting the second- and third-highest successful run-chases ever.
John Buchanan, the Australian coach, said he was concerned that his team allowed New Zealand to chase down totals of 337 and 346, telling Australian journalists: "At the moment it highlights our defense. It's something we have to get right. It is a matter of making sure we do all the homework and do specific training for the team we are about to play."
Australia had topped the rankings for 52 consecutive months. In the first ratings in 2002, it led South Africa by 128 points to 120, a score calculated against a baseline of 100 and based on performances over the previous two years. Its lead peaked at 23 points in 2004 and again in 2005, when its score reached a record 140. Its current rating of 125 is its lowest ever, three points behind South Africa, which has the highest score ever attained by any country other than Australia.
The loss of top place will be largely forgotten — and also short-lived — should Australia win a third consecutive World Cup in the West Indies.
For now it will contribute to a sense among other contenders that Australia, for the first time in most current players' careers, is vulnerable.
One element in this is hubris. It was unwise of Buchanan to let it be known, as his team roared through the early stages of the Commonwealth Bank triangular tournament, that he thought the other two teams, England and New Zealand, were inadequate competition. England extracted its revenge in the final, New Zealand a few weeks later in the Chappell-Hadlee series.
Australia has been without key players. Andrew Symonds, an all-rounder,
was absent with a biceps injury that coincided almost exactly with Australia's slump. The losses have highlighted the value of his ferocious hitting, athletic fielding and ingeniously varied bowling. Ricky Ponting, the captain, and Adam Gilchrist, the wicket-keeper, missed the visit to New Zealand.
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