Australia in a cricket World Cup final is where dreams go to die.
They do not die particularly heroically either, they are ruthlessly crushed, without sentiment, almost without thought, as if an unfortunate by-product of the fact of Australia’s presence – a little like ants on busy pavements and human feet.
New Zealand and the increasing hordes of fans they have picked up through the tournament, are only the latest to discover this cold-blooded truth.
Some former players, such as Scott Styris, had felt this World Cup had come a year early for this side.
It did not look like that in New Zealand’s build up to the tournament, not just in recent months but the past year.
Neither did it look like that through the tournament.
In fact, it looked like exactly the right time for this team.
They had discovered a fine captain – not without a stumble – both in what he did on the field and the effect he had off it.
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They had wonderful fast bowlers, a champion spinner, the world’s best young batsman, a punchy wicketkeeper – they had every angle covered.
A case could easily be made for this being the best side New Zealand had produced across formats.
Sure the Richard Hadlee years were great and the 1992 side was solid, but this generation has had a depth that past ones have not – a golden generation if you will.
Precisely the kind of team Australia loves demolishing in World Cup finals.
Take, for example, Pakistan at Lord’s in 1999, the final this most resembled.
That was about as good a side Pakistan has put together, full to the brim with attacking bowlers, a few soon-to-be great batsmen and a captain at his finest.
Australia brushed past them as if they did not exist.
There are similarities with the next one, at the Wanderers in Johannesburg. MS Dhoni turned India into a different limited overs team altogether, but that side, under Sourav Ganguly, was a golden generation.
No Indian ODI side had been quite as forceful, as gung-ho as that side. Result? A shellacking at the hands of Ricky Ponting’s men.
Then there was the Sri Lanka side that made the final in 2007.
Kumar Sangakkara was not the batsman he is now and Sanath Jayasuriya was ageing, but Muttiah Muralitharan, Chaminda Vaas, Lasith Malinga – all led by Mahela Jayawardene – has to be among their finest sides. Adam Gilchrist duly took them to the cleaners.
A reversal of the result in all three of those World Cup finals and it would not have felt at all out of place in the space and time of those sides.
It would have been entirely fitting and natural. All three, however – and now New Zealand – were not just denied by Australia, they were made irrelevant.
It is a dispiriting sort of truth. The best so many other countries have to offer is of no consequence to Australia.
It is also a reaffirmation of what we have known all along but which it takes the occurrence of a World Cup to bring to light. Australia are the greatest cricket nation.
If that seems overblown, then settle for them at least being the most successful.
Their history is mostly one of long stretches of unparalleled success, broken only by the briefest periods of mediocrity.
It was inevitable, too, that Michael Clarke signed off in the manner he did.
Australia kill the fairy tales of others ruthlessly, but they script their own more meticulously than any other.
osamiuddin@thenational.ae
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