Australia yet to face the heat

Well, despite the absence of key match winning players like Glenn McGrath and co in the bowling department and Gilchrist and co in the batting, the current Australian team is found winning matches and so was the case yesterday at Ahmedabad when Australia beat Zimbabwe by 91 runs. This can be considered as a formality when the result was as expected. Hardly anybody would have expected Zimbabwe to win the match against Australia or Australia to lose against Zimbabwe. However, as a matter of trivia, Australia have lost to Zimbabwe in the inaugural edition of the T20 world cup in 2007 at South Africa.

Australia are set to play New Zealand, Kenya, Sri Lanka and Canada before they face Pakistan against whom their real test is all set. Australia have greater chances of winning against Sri Lanka and a definite game against the remaining three though New Zealand can be hoped to give in a tough competition to the Aussies. There would be no doubt that Australia can make it to the quarter-finals even if they win against Kenya and Canada. The real test for Australia is obviously Pakistan and may be Sri Lanka and there can be a sense of wrong grouping of teams for pool matches.

Australia on the outlook hardly have the zest in them to face and to survive South Africans or the Indians despite previous world cups speaking otherwise. Of course, Australia have been able to beat England on 6 out of 7 occasions in the recently concluded Commonwealth Bank series. And, though Pakistan have been at the receiving end of Australia since the past one year or so when Australia thrashed them 3-0 in tests, 5-0 in one dayers and 1-0 in the one-off T20 game in 2010, this time Australia will be facing Pakistan on their more or less home soil with the conditions being almost similar to Pakistan in India.

Had the same match been held four years back when Australia were ripe with the batting-bowling combination which hardly failed, then may be Australia would have seen scoring a total of over 300 and bowling out the Zimbabwean batsmen for somewhere less than 100 or at the most 150. But, this time two things are found haunting Australia with one being their depleted team and the other being that they are playing in the sub-continent where spinners have their say and Aussies are very bad players of spin bowling. So, one has to wait for their games against Sri Lanka and Pakistan to see them defeated in world cups.