Cricket: Defeated Aussies in disarray (now that should bring a smile to your lips)

Blackleaf

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Oct 9, 2004
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English sports fans are celebrating today after the Australia cricket team, the world champions, suffered their first Series defeat in Australia since 1993, after losing by 9 wickets against South Africa.

Now, their conquerors, South Africa, are aiming to take Australia's crown as world No1.

It's been a bad year for Australian sport, this defeat coming after their poor showing at the Olympics.

Britain and Australia have probably the world's fiercest sporting rivalry. Before the Beijing Olympics, the Australian sports minister and her British counterpart placed a bet on who - Britain or Australia - would finish higher in the medals table. Whichever sports minister lost the bet would have to turn up at a sports event wearing their rivals' colours.

Britain, of course, finished higher than Australia in the medals table, so the Australian sports minister had to go to a basketball game in which Great Britain were taking part wearing a Great Britain basketball kit.

And, to top it all, their rugby league team lost to New Zealand in this year's World Cup Final - ending their THIRTY THREE year reign as World Champions.

Now the Aussies (who have an inferiority complex when it comes to the British) are vowing to get revenge on British turf during the 2012 London Olympics. A ludicrous recruitment campaign - entitled "Let's rip the Brits to bits in London 2012" - in which a young actor affects a cockney accent, pulls on a hooded top, and attempts to be "obnoxious" about Australian sport.


Heaven knows what they will do if England win the Ashes next summer.

Meanwhile, the English can just enjoy seeing the Australians in disarray.


Defeated Aussies in disarray (now that should bring a smile to your lips)


Australian sports fans will not be too sorry to see the back of 2008 after their series defeat to South Africa.



By Simon Briggs in Melbourne
31 Dec 2008
The Telegraph


RESULT

SECOND TEST, FIFTH DAY OF FIVE (At Melbourne Cricket Club)

1st Innings
South Africa: 459
Australia: 394

2nd Innings
Australia: 247
South Africa: 183-1

South Africa win the match by 9 wickets.
South Africa win the Series.




RIP: the Australian media is beginning to turn on the national side Photo: GETTY IMAGES/ SYDNEY DAILY TELEGRAPH



This was the year their cricket team lost its mojo, their rugby league team lost its 33-year hold on the World Cup, and their sports minister - Kate Ellis - lost her bet that Australia would finish ahead of Britain in the Olympic medals table.

Aussies are never comfortable with second best, and the disappointments of Beijing spurred them into a ludicrous recruitment campaign - entitled "Let's rip the Brits to bits in London 2012" - in which a young actor affects a cockney accent, pulls on a hooded top, and attempts to be "obnoxious" about Australian sport.

Heaven knows what they will do if England win the Ashes next summer.

No-one should take victory over Australia for granted, in any form of sport; they are too resourceful a people for that. Yet panic is already spreading through the local media after a fortnight in which Ricky Ponting's Australians have lost two Tests they should have won, and with it their 16-year unbeaten record at home.

Sydney's (unrelated) Daily Telegraph became the umpteenth newspaper to update Reginald Shirley Brooks's 19th-century obituary notice for English cricket.

They didn't mention the Ashes - these are the wrong opponents after all - but they did run a graphic announcing "RIP Australian cricket: slaughtered by South Africa; aided and abetted by incompetent selectors, inept batting, impotent bowling, dreadful catching and poor captaincy."

Meanwhile, a report in the Sydney Morning Herald pointed out that if South Africa win Saturday's final Test in Sydney - so carrying them to a 3-0 series win - it would be the heaviest whitewash Australia had ever suffered on home soil.

And the front page of The Australian proclaimed that "A great era has ended ... Unfortunately, the next 12 months promise to be even worse. Things are so bad, England now appear to be favourites to win next year's Ashes series."

Ponting has six months left to get his house in order before the Ashes begin in Cardiff on July 8. In that time, though, the Australians only play four Tests, all of them against South Africa, which may not do much to help their confidence.

Perhaps the biggest concern for Aussie fans has been the haplessness of the selection panel. Its chairman, Andrew Hilditch, was famed during his playing days for being a compulsive hooker - a weakness which England exploited ruthlessly during their 3-1 Ashes series win in 1985. On the current evidence, his judgement as a selector is not much better.

Though the Sheffield Shield competition is still producing talented cricketers, 15 years of plenty have taken the edge off Australia's game. You can see that in the refusal to pension off Matthew Hayden, even though he is 37 and clearly living on past glories.

You can see it in the failure to identify the next regular Test spinner. And you can see it in Ponting's indecisive captaincy.

Australia cannot seem to find a way of breaking partnerships now that Shane Warne and Glenn McGrath have shuffled off into retirement (or at least into the Indian Premier League, which is much the same thing).

With only a couple of the players who swept England in the 2006-07 Ashes still fit and firing, Ponting has a tough few seasons ahead of him. But he is not the sort of man to back down from the challenge.

"I'm still very positive," he said after Tuesday's defeat, "because I'm very sure that with some of the young guys coming through, in a few years' time we can get back up there and dominate world cricket again."

History tells us that Australia have never fallen far off the pace; their competitive mindset, their bouncy pitches and their outdoor lifestyle are all too conducive to successful cricket teams.

The wheel, surely, will turn again. As long as it doesn't turn before July, though, England must have a great chance of pinching the Ashes.

telegraph.co.uk
 
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gopher

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Looks like professionalism is hurting Ozland's sports success. The loss of Sonny Bill Williams to British league rugger put a tremendous damper on the NRL this season. And its repercussions were felt well into the RLWC.

As an avid fan of NRL, I greatly miss SBW. Let's hope the league will not suffer this type of loss again. But, in all honesty, it needs to raise the salaries of its players in order to compete with the likes of France and England.