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Australian cricket team has been dominating the Cricket world for the last decade. Except a few tournaments, their performance graph is almost 100% in the recent few years. They have played in the last three world cup finals and won two times. I think in the history of ODI Cricket, this is the second example of such dominating role played by a team. In the 70s and 80s, the then West Indies team had such domination over the whole cricket world. They also appeared in the three consecutive world cup finals and won two times- in 1975 and 1979. Today’s Ricky Pointing, Mathew Hayden, McGrath can be compared with Clive Lloyd, Gordon Greenidge, Malcolm Marshall. However, after the three consecutive World Cup finals, West Indies team got out of the scene and has not reached any further World Cup final yet since 1983. Australia also played in the last three World Cup finals but it would not be safe to say that Australia is also going to be out of the scene from World Cup Cricket 2007. However, let’s just assume that Australia will also follow West Indies making the second example of such disappointment.

Well, then the question comes that who will stop Australia. It is, for sure, a hard question to answer. On the other hand, Australia’s recent failure against England and New Zeeland has raised some eyebrows about the success of Australian team in World Cup Cricket 2007.

Australia recently experienced their first ever 10 wickets defeat in the history of ODI Cricket when they lost to New Zeeland. It is true that Australia could not score big but it is hard to believe that Australian bowler could not take any of the New Zealand wickets. I do not think that New Zealand batsman are less capable than the Australian batsman but is it believable that McGrath remained wicketless whereas his counterpart Shane Bond took 5 wickets in the same pitch! Do not you think that the bad days for Australia have just started or was it a minor glitch? If you look at the second ODI then you can see that the same batting line up made a three hundred plus score but due to the continuous bad performance of the Australian bowlers, they lost the match by 5 wickets.

I believe that Australia is still the most powerful force in World Cup Cricket 2007 though they lost their first place in the ODI ranking. If half of the players click in the World Cup 2007 then it will really be hard for other teams to stop Australia. On the other hand, I would not blame you for thinking that South Africa or West Indies can take away the glory from Australia.

What is your idea?