It was great to see Australians back to their best with resounding win over the depleted NewZeland. Ponting and his team once again proved they are champs and deliver when it matters most. This victory means a lot and must be sweet for Ponting and Australia after the bitter Ashes loss and test series loss against South Africa at home. Even Team India was compared with Australian's almost all the time when ever India won a single outing against them and was written that India will replace the Aussies in the top, which till now is only on papers.
I am a great fan of the few modern day batsmen like Steve Waugh,Ponting,Lara and my favorite of all Sachin. I think Ponting has performed exceptionally well when it comes to the big stage and the finals, even though he had a strong team when he came into the side and his success was attributed to mostly because, he was playing for Australia. Now with all the big guys out and shouldering the young team and most importantly carrying the team with him and scoring big in the big game shows that he has been more successful than any one in this era, even more than our own great Sachin.
On Team India's performance in the championship, it was ordinary and i feel it will stay like this in the future for various obvious reasons. I can kind of relate English football with our cricket team, england used to be a big force in football until the cash rich EPL took the center stage and after that you all know that England has not been able to even reach the semi-finals of the WorldCup even though they had great players in the side. I can see the same happening to Indian cricket, lot of quick money is in the table through IPL and sponsorships and the pride for playing for India is there only till you play the first few seasons and after that its like you consolidate and get yourself picked for one of the IPL franchise. Its really good to see that our players are paid well and secured for the future and with great infrastructure in place we should see the team raise their level of professionalism and perform consistently at the top level and not settle with IPL. Australia benefited most from IPL re-discovering players like Shane Watson,Marsh etc but we have lost more players than discovered.
BCCI and selectors need to look into team building from now on and save the players from injury by opting out from useless tours like the one we had in WestIndies and Srilanka to keep the team in good shape for the WorldCup. BCCI should look into the roles of the various coaches and support staff in the team to make sure they deliver and not travel like baggage. Paddy Upton's recommendations on performance improvement stimulants are the worst suggestions i have ever heard / read from any coach or support staff in any sporting field.
