KEY POINTS:
Australia's cricketers were yesterday still coming to terms with their shock loss to India in the third cricket test but scoffed at suggestions their global dominance of the game had ended.
India won the match by 72 runs with a day to spare to hand the Australians their first test defeat in nearly two-and-a-half years and their first loss on home soil since 2003.
The loss also shattered Australia's bid to set a new record for consecutive test wins; they had won 16 in a row.
Fast bowler Stuart Clark, who made his test debut when Australia's 16-match winning streak began against South Africa in Cape Town in March 2006, said all the players were hurt by the defeat.
"Anytime you lose anything, whether it's a game of cricket or a game of tiddlywinks, it's disappointing," Clark said.
Australia are still in a rebuilding process after Shane Warne, Glenn McGrath, Justin Langer and Damien Martyn all retired last season and for most of the current team it was the first time they had experienced defeat in a test.
Local media said the result was another sign Australia's grip on world cricket was loosening after a few cracks emerged in a side that dominated world cricket for the past decade.
They lost the Ashes to England in 2005, although they regained them at home the following season, and despite their long sequence of wins, they have struggled to fill the void left by the retirements of Warne and McGrath.
Middle-order batsman Mike Hussey, who averages over 80 after 21 tests, is one who only now has experienced their first test loss. He said Australia had only themselves to blame when they failed to cope with the savage swing of India's seamers and were dismissed for 212 in the first innings.
"There is some suggestion this loss will mark the end of the golden era of Australian cricket but I whole-heartedly disagree," he wrote in his weekly column for the Sunday Times. "We are constantly challenging ourselves to improve as a side and new talent coming into the team is very encouraging."
The Indian press hailed their national side's win for the spirit displayed in recovering from the controversies of the second test. "This was the charge of a slighted India, nursing hurt, betrayal, anger, exorcising the demons with that most elusive and sweetest of statements," national daily Times of India said.
"A slap in the face of Aussie arrogance, achieved on the cricket field. In the opposition's citadel, with a clinical display of skill. It doesn't get better than this."
- REUTERS
