The Australian slump is turning out to be a nightmare and Australia now find themselves faced with the prospect of two must win games if they are to win this series in New Zealand on World Cup eve. To add to their woes, Ricky Ponting and Adam Gilchrist have been rested for this tour, while Andrew Symonds is out injured.
Australia have now lost 4 of their last 5 ODI games. The last time this happened was in the 1997-98 season, when in 5 ODI’s from a game in Napier against New Zealand on 12th February 1998 to a game on 7th April 1998 at Kanpur against India, the Australians lost twice each against India and New Zealand and managed a sole win against Zimbabwe at Ahmedabad. Just to put this in perspective, that defeat at Napier was ODI 1292, while this one at Wellington was ODI 2524 – almost half of ODI history.
Australia have had 4-5 instances in the last 9 years where they have managed to lose 3 out of 5, the worst being a streak (if you can call it that) where they went Lost, Won, Tied, Lost, Lost from ODI 1591 to ODI 1633.
The full Australian side is still probably very very difficult to beat, and Ponting has a 104-25 record in 137 ODI matches as captain – the best record in history. Others who come closest are
Clive Lloyd (64-18 in 84 games)
Viv Richards (67-36 in 105 games)
Hansie Cronje (99-35 in 138 games)
Shaun Pollock (59-29 in 92 games)
Steve Waugh (67-36 in 106 games)
John Buchanan asked for a fight just before this disastrous run – it may well happen, that New Zealand will ask Australia for a fight after todays result! After an unrivalled run of success as Australia coach – having created and managed the most successful ODI and Test sides in history over the last 8 years, is there to be that proverbial sting in the tail which may curse John Buchanan’s life as Australian coach?
The Ratings on 16th February 2007 are as follows:
South Africa 0.609
Australia 0.571
New Zealand 0.536
India 0.516
Sri Lanka 0.510
England 0.497
West Indies 0.486
Pakistan 0.465
Zimbabwe 0.310
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