Ricky Ponting has called on Australia to show some pride as they bid to avoid a one-day international series whitewash against England. England have taken an unassailable 3-0 lead in the five-match series and can complete a clean sweep if they win today's match at The Oval and then at Lord's on Sunday, to add to their recent victories over Australia in the World Twenty20 final and the Ashes last year.
Ponting, however, is hoping the tourists can avoid that humiliating fate. "What we have to do now is show a bit of pride in our performances in the last two games and try and salvage whatever we can out of the series,'' the Australia captain was quoted as saying in the Sydney Morning Herald. Ponting's main concern has been the lack of runs from his top-order batsmen and he said: "We've played five games on tour now, so you'd like to think that we'd be making runs on a more consistent basis than we are.
"If there's a positive to be taken out of the first three [ODI] games, it's that we've stuck to our task pretty well with the ball." Doug Bollinger has been Australia's stand-out bowler so far in the series and the left-arm paceman is determined to halt England's winning spree. "We'd love to stop them, 5-0 would be devastating," he was quoted as saying on Cricinfo. "But we've just got to go out there and do everything properly and hopefully win the next two; 3-2 would still be disappointing, but it would be two good wins.
"It isn't the start we wanted being 3-0 down, but there isn't much we can do. You can't win all the time and it hurts to say it as nobody likes to lose. I think that this just gets a few weeds out when you have lost a few games and you can figure what you can do to be better the next time. "Everyone went out and played their guts out and sometimes it just doesn't work out. We can't whinge about it, we just have to try and finish well in these two one-dayers before the T20s and Tests against Pakistan [in England next month]. They've come on massively, especially with winning the T20 they are sky high at the moment. Every one in their team has got their game together. We have to lift 10-15 per cent and we are capable of doing that.
"Nobody likes a winning team unless it's your own, but we'll be alright." England's success over their greatest rivals and consistently one of the best sides in world cricket has led to Graeme Swann, the spin bowler, claiming Andrew Strauss's team are the real "golden generation" in English sports. The England football team have been wearing that tag for some time, but after their disappointing performance at the World Cup in South Africa, Swann, a central figure in England's rise up cricket's world order, thinks it is time for a review.
"It would be nice to think that we are the golden generation rather than the footballers," he told reporters. "But we all wanted England to do well in the World Cup, and that was a big let down." * Compiled by Ahmed Rizvi, with agencies
