*Official* Australia in decline thread

[pasag]

You could make a timeline for this sort of thing.

Step 1) Australia win everything for a while.
Step 2) Australia lose a match, a series, a day or a session, a player retires or is injured, or any combination thereof.
Step 3) A thread is created suggesting, arguing or insisting that Australia are in decline and their next match against X team will be tough, or that X team will inevitably overtake them in the near future.
Step 4) 300 similar threads are created.
Step 5) Australia win everything for a while.

 

[Nate]

Really?

 

[Pratters]

The opening post is what we are discussing and what people are referring to when they make their ridiculous comments.

Ya I know that people are meaning the opening post when they are making their 'ridiculing' replies (most if not all times in the thread) and that aspect is fair enough. I haven't been speaking about them btw but to give my point of view on the topic of Aussies being as dominant compared to other sides or not in tests in the last couple of pages.

 

[Unattainableguy]

The opening post is what we are discussing and what people are referring to when they make their ridiculous comments.

Ridiculous comments

I gave my reason. Even if it was a T20, the Australian team of the last ODI WC would not have lost to ZIM. And then they went on to lose two more games. This series against IND was won because of only 2-3 players. And the fact AUS don't have a quality spinner yet automatically means they're going to struggle in some of their test matches because a team can have some very good fast bowlers, but it still needs a good spinner in test matches, esp right now because fast bowlers are not going to give their everything on flat pitches over a period of 5 days.

 

[biased indian]

The opening post is what we are discussing and what people are referring to when they make their ridiculous comments.

 

[pup11]

Agreed Aussies have lost some important players, but are the important players from other side still in their teens or something, the other teams also have good players who are either on the verge of retirement or have already retired Australia atleast had planned to bring in the replacements whom can be atleast rated as decent but what about the other teams do they have any decent replacements for their good but ageing players??
So won't the retirement of these players effect their respective sides??

 

[Pratters]

Agreed Aussies have lost some important players, but are the important players from other side still in their teens or something, the other teams also have good players who are either on the verge of retirement or have already retired Australia atleast had planned to bring in the replacements whom can be atleast rated as decent but what about the other teams do they have any decent replacements for their good but ageing players??
So won't the retirement of these players effect their respective sides??

Losing three star players like McGrath, Warne and Langer is definitely a loss. Just because Australia have coped with losing players before doesn’t mean they will this time necessarily. How well Australia copes with it or how dominant it can be is some thing which remains to be seen and only the future can tell.

Similarly, whenever other teams lose players, how it affects them remains to be seen. When England lost Thorpe for instance, it got Pieterson. When world tennis lost Sampras, Federer started shining big time. So which team copes how well with losing players is a separate problem of each of those teams and each team will cope differently with such problems.

We can say with a fair bit of faith that Australia won’t go down to the level of West Indies from the peaks of their glory days because of the structure they possess but that does not mean that they cannot be less dominant than they are now compared to other teams.

 

[Woodster]

Can Australia's dominance continue ?

http://www.cricketweb.net/article.php?CategoryIDAuto=3&NewsIDAuto=4698

 

[pup11]

Superb article very well written, yeah completly agree with the things that have been written in the article Australia surely have a huge task on their hands to maintain their dominance in world cricket, and i think we would be able to do that in Odi cricket but in test cricket it would be a lot tougher for the younger lot to maintain the same standards that were set by Warne & co.

 

[skipper]

Bowling is their weak link at the moment.

 

[anoop4real]

Superb article very well written, yeah completly agree with the things that have been written in the article Australia surely have a huge task on their hands to maintain their dominance in world cricket, and i think we would be able to do that in Odi cricket but in test cricket it would be a lot tougher for the younger lot to maintain the same standards that were set by Warne & co.

No way they will struggle in ODI also....most of the teams like India,PAK,SA etc are showing good performance....so Aussies need to sweat a lot

 

[White Lightning]

good article.

i think australia's strength lies in the first class competition beneath the test team.

they are thoroughly professional in their approach to the game, and play at such a high level of intensity.

if you look through the players contracted to state teams the vast majority of players are one of the following
1 - pushing for selection in the australian team
2 - have played previously in the australian team and adding experience to the state team
3 - young talent who could be pushing for selection in the australian team in the near future

there are very few "journeymen" cricketers in the competition, probably the only ones i can think of at the moment are Michael Dighton, Dan Marsh, Greg Mail (gone now), Nathan Adcock, Clinton Perren, Joe Dawes (long gone now).... a few others out there but not that many. And even those 6 are of a pretty high standard (probably not Adcock actually...).

But I think that's where the weakness in other countries lie. The step up to International cricket is too much, and thats because their first class competition is not strong enough and a big part of the problem is the high amount of just "good-ordinary" cricketers who just plod along for 10-12 years without ever even threatening to play international cricket. These sort of cricketers just don't give you enough of a test, especially when you play so many of them.

 

[Pratters]

India don't really inspire me tbh, Pratyush. Yeah the Test series win in England was great but in the near future there is going to be a huge whole in their batting lineup. There may be alot of bowling options floating about but the only one that looks classy is Zaheer. All the others are abit meh. If I may be so blunt, it seems that that so called depth is nothing more than a heap of average players. The England series was probably the peak of this Indian Test side and I just don't see them getting better and better. All imo of course.

Heh.

 

[Turbinator]

Haha Pratyush, I am just waiting for after the fourth test match to get back at everyone. Gonna' be quite a scene here on CW. Am confident I'll be doing a lot of quoting.

 

[PY]

I don't see what the problem is with what Pasag has said there to be honest.

One Test match doth not make a jot of difference.

 

[Turbinator]

I don't see what the problem is with what Pasag has said there to be honest.

One Test match doth not make a jot of difference.

The thing is, it's not just one Test match, it's the last two Test matches. And the first one, was a big loss for obvious reasons (lack of prep), which I won't get into once again. Face it, Australia just haven't looked very hot shot for most part against India.

 

[Pratters]

I don't see what the problem is with what Pasag has said there to be honest.

One Test match doth not make a jot of difference.

Errr...

There may be alot of bowling options floating about but the only one that looks classy is Zaheer. All the others are abit meh. If I may be so blunt, it seems that that so called depth is nothing more than a heap of average players. The England series was probably the peak of this Indian Test side

 

[pasag]

Haha, classy

Tbf, I was thinking about those posts during the past few Tests and well readily retract and concede some of it and will certainly concede the RP point.

On a side point, it is interesting to see how Sreesanth goes from here, he was a bowler who I was very excited about up till sometime last year but after England I was really turned off when he looked like he lost pace and just looked overall unthreatening. It's a credit to India's bowling recently that his absence is more or less unnoticed and even fully fit I wouldn't pick him in India's starting XI.

 

[Pratters]

Haha, classy

Tbf, I was thinking about those posts during the past few Tests and well readily retract and concede some of it and will certainly concede the RP point.

On a side point, it is interesting to see how Sreesanth goes from here, he was a bowler who I was very excited about up till sometime last year but after England I was really turned off when he looked like he lost pace and just looked overall unthreatening. It's a credit to India's bowling recently that his absence is more or less unnoticed and even fully fit I wouldn't pick him in India's starting XI.

I am so happy about RP... He hasn't been perfect with his line but still... Also, I was pleasantly surprised that during the Tea break interview on Star Cricket couple of days back, Benaud said that he was most impressed by RP among the Indian bowlers in England. It was interesting as it came from Benaud. Love RP so much.

On Sreesanth - He needs a lot of improving to be able to perform against quality sides imo. He can bowl some special balls but he also bowls stray deliveries which are enough to loosen the pressure. With Zaheer, Pathan, Ishant (who is so promising) and RP in the line up, Sreesanth has some very stiff competition.

 

[Manee]

On a side point, it is interesting to see how Sreesanth goes from here, he was a bowler who I was very excited about up till sometime last year but after England I was really turned off when he looked like he lost pace and just looked overall unthreatening. It's a credit to India's bowling recently that his absence is more or less unnoticed and even fully fit I wouldn't pick him in India's starting XI.

I think that pace is no issue for Sreesanth. He clocks in the low to mid 140kph range in his opening spells in ODIs since the England tour. I just think that the ball swung around too much for Sreesanth in England which meant he tried to slow down in order to get a better grip of accuracy.