Cricket: A year dominated by Australians - on and off the pitch

By TONY LAWRENCE

If the cricketing zenith of 2003 had an Australian quality, then so did its nadir.

Leg-spinner Shane Warne hit a new low in his rollercoaster career when he failed a drugs test, blamed his mother's slimming pills and missed out on the World Cup adventure in South Africa at the start of the year.

Fortunately, he was not missed by his team-mates.

Warne-less, they barely broke sweat in retaining their title, crushing India by 125 runs in the Johannesburg final, courtesy of a spectacular 140 not out from Ricky Ponting.

Sachin Tendulkar and Sourav Ganguly, with four centuries between them earlier in the tournament, both failed miserably when it mattered most, Tendulkar lasting just five balls.

The Australian victory on March 23 formed part of an unprecedented 21-match one-day winning sequence. Warne, banned for 12 months, has barely been discussed since.

The year ended with another Australian's name on everyone's lips.

Steve Waugh, barred from the World Cup by the selectors rather than the drug testers, cornered the headlines by announcing his imminent retirement.

He will leave at the end of the test series against India as the most capped player in history, the second most productive batsman of all time and a captain without equal.

Unlike Warne, he has squeezed every single available drop out of his store of natural talent. Unlike Warne, he will depart a perfect role model, with the only mild blot an addiction to questioning the parentage of opposing batsmen.

Matthew Hayden never retires voluntarily.

He made October another Australian month by scoring a world-record 380 against Zimbabwe at Perth, including 66 in sixes and 152 in fours.

Only one other current player has a better test average than Hayden - team-mate Adam Gilchrist with 59.09 to his 57.95.

Waugh said the innings contained the "cleanest ball-striking" he had ever seen.

For Zimbabwe, it was just more of the same. Few teams can ever have had as wretched a year.

Their World Cup was blighted by a black-armbanded protest by leading batsman Andy Flower and bowler Henry Olonga against President Robert Mugabe's Government.

Both quit the international scene immediately after the tournament, followed by a string of other stalwarts.

Helped by England's refusal to play in Harare, Zimbabwe sneaked into the World Cup Super Sixes, only to lose to the jiving Kenyans.

At least the team managed to draw the first test in Bulawayo in November to end an 11-match losing run, the second worst in cricket history.

The worst - 20 consecutive test defeats and still counting - is the property of Bangladesh, who began to show some improvements under new coach Dav Whatmore, but otherwise had as pitiful a time as Zimbabwe.

They contrived to lose all their World Cup matches, falling to test hopefuls Kenya and to the Canadians, whose cricket pitches spend much of the year topped by snowmen and toboggans.

Bangladesh were also on the wrong end of the other famous exploit of 2003 - an unprecedented hat-trick with the first three balls of a one-day international by Sri Lankan quick Chaminda Vaas.

Vaas began by bowling Hannan Sarkar, then caught and bowled Mohammad Ashraful and had Ehsanul Haque caught in the slips, before completing the first over of their February 14 World Cup encounter at Pietermaritzburg with figures of 1-0-5-4.

The year saw an unusually long list of high-profile retirements.

Sri Lanka lost Aravinda de Silva, a 1996 World Cup winner, Pakistan lost Wasim Akram, a 1992 World Cup winner and the only man to take more than 400 wickets in both forms of the game, and England lost Darren Gough and Nasser Hussain as a captain and one-day player.

Quick bowler Javagal Srinath also departed - again - after being coaxed back for the World Cup by India, while the West Indies' Carl Hooper, who refused to play for the team for two years earlier in his career, began another self-imposed exile after being sacked as captain after the World Cup.

Without him, West Indies scored a world record 418 for seven in the fourth innings - the previous mark had stood for 27 years - to win the fourth and final test against Australia in Antigua in May.

In all, Australia lost just two of their 10 tests. As so often, both defeats - the other was against England, in early January in Sydney - came in the final games of series already long won.

- REUTERS