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Even one month ago, Australia was thought to be unofficial winner of the upcoming World Cup Cricket 2007. They were dreaming for their third consecutive world cup championship. However, just after a month, they are now going through a nightmare phase. In between this time, they were defeated by England for three consecutive times making England the winner of the Commonwealth Bank series. After many years, Australia lost a tournament at home. Then, in the recent series against host New Zealand, Australia went down with the most heart breaking performances that the Australian fans have ever seen in the history of Australian cricket.

In the first ODI against New Zealand, Australia experienced their first ever 10 wickets defeat in One Day Cricket. Then in the second ODI, Australian batsmen scored 336 but due to the bad bowling performance, New Zealand batsmen made the target easy as they won the match keeping 8 balls at hand. Through this match, New Zealand won the series and for the first time in last five years, Australia lost their first place in the ODI ranking to South Africa. Having gone through some disappointing performance, it was needed for Australia to prove their Cricketing talent again in the final match of the series. However, in the last ODI, Australia experienced their final disappointment in recent by losing by 1 wicket. It happened earlier today. Australia made a huge total of 346 runs. In return, despite losing four wickets within 41 runs, New Zealand batsmen specially Fulton, McMillan and McCullum made this huge score possible to reach. With this defeat, Australia experienced their first whitewash within the last ten years.

So, it has been seen that Australian players are now going through a nightmare phase which will definitely make Australia less confident ahead of the World Cup Cricket 2007. Chappell-Hadlee Trophy against New Zealand has put the supremacy of the Australian team in question. However, they came to New Zealand at last leaving the regular captain Ricky Pointing and Vice-captain Adam Gilchrist at home. I think this was a wrong decision taken by the Cricket Australia. Their logic was to give the important players rest ahead of the world cup whereas New Zealand played their best team. In addition, the strike bowler Brett Lee and tremendous all-rounder Andrew Symonds fell in injury which proved to be very costly for Team Australia.

I think that at this moment, Australian players will have to work hard to regain the confidence which is most important for a big tournament like World Cup Cricket. Then they have to work out the problems they are facing now.