Rocky Balboa

The big news going into the World Cup is the incredible knock-out punches delivered to the mighty Australians in two successive bouts against lowly ranked opponents, England and New Zealand. It was like the crafty ant taking on the arrogant tiger and reducing the roaring beast to a bucket of tears by attacking the vulnerable spot near the sensitive heel. Seriously, the double whammy the Aussies got was rather as unexpected as warm sunshine in Iceland. It was sheer brutal devastation. But the Australians are like Rocky Balboa, and like the legendary boxer who returned recently for his last hurrah, the Australians pack the same quality of pugilistic resilience.

In fact, every-time the Australians have usually been shell-shocked into sudden submission, they have usually retaliated with an aggressive counter-attack. Expect it.

Humbled by a remarkably and unusually disciplined Poms in the Ashes series two years ago in England, they returned the compliment with undisguised single-minded annihilation (5-0, no less) turning the dispirited folks from Tony Blair’s territory to fried fish and chips. And who will ever forget the near-exit status of the Aussies in the 1999 World Cup in England, till they dramatically usurped all opposition in a seven-match winning streak, upsetting the Proteas calculations, and winning their first World Cup.

Back home in India in 2001, after a nerve-wrangling defiant partnership between Sameer Dighe and Harbhajan Singh at Chepauk ensured that the Final Frontier which Steve Waugh was so desperately attempting to seize remained unconquered, a lot of us complacently boasted of the impregnable fortress that Team India was on it’s dusty backyard. But no! On a determined warpath and with a definite game-plan in Y 2004, the Adam Gilchrist –led team finally crumbled our proud resistance at Nagpur (thanks to some kindly disposition of home curators).

This time, of course, things just might be a wee bit different. Brett Lee, that fiery paceman with an insatiable appetite for generating more pace, is sadly ruled out. The usually injury free Ricky Ponting, currently the world’s best batsman in almost both forms of the game, is struggling to be the back-bone of his team, plagued by a painful bone spur. Andrew Symonds, the constant swashbuckler, has dark clouds ominously hanging over his biceps. And Michael Clarke knows fully well that hips don’t lie.

So niggling injuries, and post-surgery recuperation bogs the team like never before. It can sometimes make you raise ugly questions of self-doubt in a normally serene head. The shocking rout against New Zealand is indefensible; clearly the Australians did not have a Plan B or C. And Glen McGrath is looking more like Muffasa, the grand old man in Lion King, all royal and regal, but the worried frowns are surfacing with more frequent consistency, and the shoulders are involuntarily looping downwards, the walk-back certainly a yard slower.

The great Sir Gary Sobers believes that the Australians will race downhill like the West Indies. In fact, he believes the disintegration has begun. I beg to differ.

Like Rocky Balboa, the Australians will bounce back throwing their punches with fire and ferocity. I don’t think they ever play with anything else on their minds other than the stubborn belief that the scent of victory will be inching closer to their nostrils with every passing ball. That’s what makes them a different species. A hat-trick of World Cup victories will maybe add some more fuel to their motivational tank.

The battle-lines are drawn and the end results may be perhaps much closer, but if I were Stephen Fleming I would still be dreading playing Ponting’s people the most.

Ponting is hurting. And not just in his back.