Seven-point plan to stop Australia

[DesiChap]

My seven-point plan to stop Australia Australia might be the best one-day team in world cricket, but they are not unbeatable. Andy BullApril 13, 2007 1:11 PM What do you make of the team in green and gold? There are two basic takes on the Aussies: either you're sick of seeing them win, or you can't get enough of it. A team of true champions or a bunch of proper bastards? Having sat up through so many winter nights, watching them demolish England again and again - and again - I know where I stand. Since the tournament started Australia have looked utterly unbeatable. With the Kiwis turning in their first poor performance in the Super Eights, and the Sri Lankans having lost Lasith Malinga for up to two weeks, it seems there is little to stop them repeating their success. And what a depressing thought that is. It's not quite time to despair, however. If Australia are going to triumph, they have to win two knockout matches - the semi-final and the final - and that is as tough as one-day cricket gets. Since the start of 2006, they've lost 14 of their 48 one-day matches. Or about one in every three-and-a-half games. They lost twice to the West Indies, twice to Sri Lanka, three times apiece to England and New Zealand and four times to South Africa. They've even lost three one-day series in that time. So, like a drowning man grasping frantically at a passing bundle of straws, I sat down in the pub last night with a bunch of scorecards and knocked out this six-point plan on the back of a packet of fags. Now, there are people like England video analyst Mark Garaway who make fully paid careers out of figuring this sort of thing out. And, let's face it, if the professionals make such a balls-up of it, there isn't much hope for this list - even if, unlike Garaway, we can aim to spell 'nicks' correctly. But, with a little help from some of you, perhaps we can convince ourselves that planning to stop Australia winning this thing isn't the most futile exercise undertaken since Freddie Flintoff hopped on a pedalo. 1) If you win the toss, bat first. The only team to buck the trend since the start of 2006 and still win were New Zealand. With Michael Hussey short of form in the middle order, Andrew Symonds inclined to attack rather than defend, and the excellent tail-end batting of Brett Lee altogether absent, the lower order is more prone to succumbing to pressure than you might expect. If you can get through to the lower order, that is. 2) Target Brad Hogg. In the six consecutive losses to England and New Zealand, Hogg returned combined figures of 40 overs, no maidens, and no wickets for 229 runs. Targeting him doesn't mean slogging him, it means not getting out. If you negate Hogg then you reduce the options available to Ponting enormously. In those six matches, Hogg only twice completed his spell of ten overs which put more pressure on the already under-fire seamers. 3) Look to your left-handed batsmen. Graeme Smith, Sanath Jayasuriya, Chris Gayle, Kumar Sangakkara and Brian Lara: all of them passed fifty twice in those wins against Australia. Ed Joyce scored his only international century against them back in Sydney. Failing that, get a fat middle-order biffer in, which seemed to work for New Zealand in the Chappell-Hadlee series, where Craig McMillan scored 169 runs at 84. 4) You need a brilliant pair of opening bowlers: one miser and one wicket-taker. The Australians look to bully bowlers: if you have one who is difficult to hit, they'll be forced to take on the man at the other end. This combination worked for New Zealand, where Shane Bond was the beneficiary, South Africa in early 2006 with Shaun Pollock and Makhaya Ntini, Sri Lanka did it with Chaminda Vaas and Ruchira Perera and even the West Indies had Ian Bradshaw and Jerome Taylor. 5) Hope the ball is swinging. Liam Plunkett suddenly looked like one of the best bowlers in the world when the ball started to move at the end of the CB Series. Pollock, Vaas, Shane Bond and Taylor all used early swing to tear through their upper order. Ricky Ponting is more vulnerable to the swinging ball coming into his pads than any other delivery, what with his tendency to lean over to the off early in his innings. Matthew Hayden and Adam Gilchrist, both seek to hit over the top early on, and that is extremely risky when the ball is moving in the air. 6) Take your run-outs. All of them. In those 14 defeats, the score in run outs is 12 to Australia, 16 to the opposition. 7) I've decided to add a seventh point, which is to hope for an act of god to intervene on your behalf. Some sort of King Ralph-style massive freak accident perhaps. Either that or enlist the help of the GU blogging community to come with a plan to make Baldrick proud... http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/sport/2007/04/13/my_sevenpoint_plan_to_stop_aus.html