A faulty team or a faulty tournament?
Andrew Miller
25-Feb-2013
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It's not such a bed of roses for Australia's cricketers now. Four defeats in five matches and a succession of untimely injuries have put their World Cup preparations under the skids. But Malcolm Conn, the chief correspondent of The Australian, has no doubt where the blame lies.
The national team that turned out in cold and windy Wellington yesterday was an Australian XI, not the Australia XI, further damaging the credibility of a tournament that has obviously become surplus to requirements in a hopelessly crowded summer program
In the same newspaper, Matt Price is equally scathing of the merits of the one-day circus.
Now we're blessed with another hideously inconsequential one-day vaudeville act in New Zealand - although yesterday's result was a cracker - followed by a bunch of stunning World Cup preliminaries against giants such as Scotland and The Netherlands. The grind has become so relentless champion players are compelled to rest, either through injury or exhaustion. Some time around mid-winter there'll be a half-interesting final which most sensible people will have forgotten within a fortnight
Elsewhere, other Australian journalists have averted their gaze - not least Peter Roebuck in The Sydney Morning Herald, who preferred a trip to Alice Springs.
Andrew Miller is the former UK editor of ESPNcricinfo and now editor of The Cricketer magazine