World Cup Preview: Australia
Will the recent downslide in Australian cricket affect the defending champions’ World Cup chances? Or will they emerge stronger to win a record fourth consecutive time?
In a build-up to cricket’s biggest event, we’ll take a look at the various contenders at the World Cup and look at their performances coming into to the tournament. We’ll start with defending champions Australia, who despite their troubles in the longer format of the game, are still the number one ODI side in the world today.
For the analysis, we look at performances in the past two years, since that gives us enough of a sample size to pick from and because not too many stars have retired in the past 24 months.
Team Performance
Australia has the highest win-loss ratio of all teams heading in to the World Cup and is the only team to have won at least 40 matches in the past 12 months.
| Team | Mat | Won | Lost | NR | W/L |
| Australia | 65 | 41 | 21 | 3 | 1.95 |
Batsmen
In analyzing the batsmen, we have looked at the top fifty run-getters across all teams in the past 24 months. In addition to runs per innings and strike rate, we look at the batting momentum (BM) as an overall measure of batting performance and rank the batsmen in terms of this metric. We use an equivalent metric of bowling efficiency (BE) for the bowlers.
| Player | Mat | Runs | Runs per innings | SR | 100s | BM | BM Rank |
| SR Watson | 49 | 2023 | 41.29 | 87.34 | 4 | 52.6 | 10 |
| MEK Hussey | 55 | 1966 | 37.81 | 91.86 | 0 | 49.9 | 14 |
| RT Ponting | 48 | 1830 | 38.13 | 81.08 | 3 | 46.2 | 19 |
| MJ Clarke | 45 | 1696 | 37.69 | 73.26 | 2 | 42.7 | 28 |
| BJ Haddin | 37 | 1173 | 32.58 | 88.52 | 2 | 41.9 | 30 |
| CL White | 53 | 1629 | 34.66 | 79.93 | 2 | 41.6 | 31 |
| TD Paine | 24 | 725 | 30.21 | 68.72 | 1 | 32.8 | 45 |
While Australia has three of the four highest run aggregators over the past two years in Watson, Hussey and Ponting, their highest player in terms of batting momentums is only 10th. However, with five batsmen in the top 30, it’s the balance that makes the Aussies one of the better batting sides heading into the tournament. They’ll hope Mike Hussey is fit in time for the World Cup because he’s been their most consistent batsman after Shane Watson.
Bowlers
| Player | Mat | Wkts | Ave | Econ | Bowling Efficiency | BE Rank |
| DE Bollinger | 30 | 47 | 23.53 | 4.42 | 56.08 | 8 |
| B Lee | 17 | 29 | 23.37 | 4.9 | 52.75 | 11 |
| SR Watson | 49 | 53 | 23.67 | 4.93 | 51.87 | 14 |
| MG Johnson | 43 | 65 | 28.87 | 5.15 | 41.29 | 25 |
| NM Hauritz | 49 | 52 | 34.3 | 4.63 | 37.32 | 28 |
Ryan Harris has been Australia’s most consistent bowler over the past two years but he isn’t even in the squad. Doug Bollinger will be hoping to translate IPL success and recent ODI success into match-winning World Cup performances. Lee is also back and should provide a big boost with his wicket-taking ability.
Overall Assessment
It’s interesting to see Australia have only two players in the top ten across batting and bowling. Shane Watson has proved to be a consistent match-winner, but other than him the Aussies have relied more on teamwork over the past 24 months to pull off over 40 victories. The middle order still looks fragile and that’s an area the Aussies need to sort out if they are to win the Cup for a fourth straight time. A lot will depend on Michael Clarke, especially if Hussey is not fit. If Clarke can find some form in the World Cup then Australia will be a very strong contender. If he doesn’t, then that middle order might crumble in a game or two when the top order fails.
Australia should finish top two in their group, with competition from Sri Lanka for the top spot. That could set up a match-up with England, the West Indies or Bangladesh in the quarters where you’d have to fancy the men from Down Under. After that, it might be South Africa or India in the semis and that’s where we might see the Aussie World Cup run end.
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