Aussies:Riches To Rags???

Last year(2007) Aussies had to surrender the commonwealth bank series trophy to arch rivals England due to a lot of overconfidence from the Australian players.The Australians had lost such a series after four consecutive wins against England in 2003,India in 2004, Pakistan in 2005 and Sri Lanka in 2006(after losing the first of the three finals).

This year,owing to no confidence-after losing the Perth Test,which stopped their streak of 17 consecutive test wins,followed by the Melbourne ODI loss to India in the second round robin of the commonwealth bank series.And at last a loss to Sri Lanka-which came close to winning on the previous three occasions too.but went down due to some reckless batting and rains.This looked all the more sufficient to make the mighty Aussies nervous.

The last time the Aussies were found to have undergone through such a bad patch is in the Ashes 2005 and the Chappell-Hadlee trophy early 2007 which Australia lost 3-0.The changes that have taken place in the tri nation tournament are :

1)The Australian shirt colour-which has been changed from Yellow to Baggy green
2)The sponsorers being the Commonwealth Bank which was earlier Victoria Bitter
3)Australia have been losing the series in the first two of the three finals even after commanding their position by winning most of the league matches(Australia won 7 out of 8 matches last year involving teams-England and New Zealand)

The body language of the Aussies just showed us that they were not mentally prepared for the game.Not only against India,but also against Sri Lanka they were found to struggle unless the Sri Lankan batsmen made a mess of their batting.

Something funny about the test series being that Ricky Ponting started blaming the pitch for the Perth debacle.Is this the way a twice world cup lifting captain is expected to speak?Like the saying goes"A Bad Worksman Quarrels With His Tools".

An Australian decline was bound after so much of messing up with each and every thing that came their way.Well...all controversies that were supposed to have affected India was reversed.This time,no wrong umpiring decisions,no unnecessary appealing,no racial abuse/sledging...nothing came to the Australian rescue...

"BETTER LUCK NEXT TIME-AUSSIES"