Friday, October 07, 2005

Australia 2 - World XI 0

I was never excited by this concept of World Champions against the Rest of the World XI matches. First of all, why should they be given the status of an ODI, and a Test match. Is McGrath's new (hypothetical) bowling record to say, 8-22 against World XI? Does not make much sense to me.

If I were an Australian, I would have had a lot to prove from this series. Just having been beaten by the English side, Aussies really had some motive to play for. But look at the World XI side. The side consists of all the Heroes from around the world. All have achieved the Glory in the past, and they are proud of their records. But what's the motive of playing this tournament? Fame? Records? PLEASE! Money could be one, but then they have so many other ways of earning money. And I am not very sure if the Dome was overcrowded! I won't be surprised if it was not even 70% occupied. The test match, a 6-day one, is sure to have a result, unless one side piles on really a huge score and the other side then takes a huge lead, or any such situation.

And as the results have shown, Australia have comfortably beaten the (much hyped) World XI by mighty margins. I guess the writing was already on the wall. It's not easy to build a good team (that is evident from the present condition of the Indian Cricket "team"). Although the team comprises of all the big-shots available on Earth, where is the "team"? Just pull in fifteen all-time best athletes and build a team in 15 days? I wish that was possible. Then we could have changed the squad every now and then. It surely takes much more than that.

It won't be long before we see the resurrection of the Australian team (I wonder if it really needed one!). As a matter of fact I am predicting 3-0 and 1-0 victories for Australian team in the coming weeks. The time will tell...

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