Australian Cricket on the Wane????

The actuating factor for me writing this blog was the shocking defeat of the mighty Australian Cricket team at the hands of South Africa...It was an hell of a thriller..As everyone knows...Lets dont deviate from the topic now...Is Australian Cricket on the wane???...Being an Australian cricket fan i would rather prefer a "no" as an answer...but sometimes i am forced to ask myself this question...its because of the recent dismal performances of the australian team...

It all started when Australia lost to then minnows Bangladesh in the Natwest Tri Series just before The Ashes in 2005..When i heard that i was so disheartened that i could not believe that such a mighty team could lose...but it was reality, i had to cope up with it...i thought then that it was the start of the Australian downfall....but they proved it wrong by sharing the Natwest Trophy with England and later winning the bilateral ODI series with England...It was then i had a ray of hope in me that the Australian Team could pull off another great whitewash in that forthcoming Ashes...

It was not the case though....England got The Ashes back after winning it 2-1....it would have been the most amazing test series of the year for a normal cricket fan....but for me it was not an amazing series at all.....what might have gone wrong???? (Cricket Australia would have also thought the same)...might be the thing that complacency crept into Punter's team....the striking fact of the series was that ,the team known for its fielding, was very much sloppy in the field..following the defeat the management dropped some of its famed players such as Michael Clarke,Damien Martyn,Jason Gillespie,Michael Kasprowicz ....the bowling attack looked depleted without two of the famous bowling quartet...

they once again proved the critics wrong by beating the "good on paper" World XI team in the Super Series...thrashing them in the one off test and also in the one dayers....

Factors i think that might cause the Australian downfall:

*Aging Players(the average age of an Australian Cricket Player is 30)
*The most controversial Rotating Policy....
*The concept behind selection of players...

Then later in the year they hosted West Indies for a 3 test match series...which they won convincingly 3-0...it was much of an one sided affair...Later in the VB series against SA and SL after some hiccups in the prelims they won the VB series finals against SL 2-1.....

In the New Year the team's first overseas tour was to that of SA....The tour started off with a 5 match ODI series with the hosts....Australia lost the first two ODIs in an unconvincing manner...But they won the next two ODIs levelling the series 2-2...the last match at Jo'Burg was the talk of the town for a week or so....it was a cracker of a contest....Australia hammered the SA bowlers all round the park....they hit a mammoth 434 for 4...it was a world record....after seeing this score on a local tv news channel i was on cloud nine... i thought the team would pull off a massive victory over SA...but it was not the case once again...Australia lost to SA by one wicket with a ball to spare...what went wrong once again????

How could a team with so much talent could not defend a massive total of 434...i was in shell shocked state for three to four days...still the score 438-9 scored by SA haunts me....what went wrong???....these series of poor performances made me to put the title of the blog as "Australian Cricket On the Wane???"...

Though i cant predict the downfall of australian cricket... i have a strong feeling that its not quite far away...lets hope for the best that there is no such downfall....Geoff Boycott once said "Australia is a Great Team with Good Players"..hope they keep up with that...through this blog one might feel that i sound anti australia, but still i am a die hard fan of the Australian Cricket Team...