By Neena Bhandari, IANS
Sydney : Australian batsmen Michael Clarke has told the fans that the team sans retired champions like Shane Warne, Glenn McGrath, Justin Langer and Damien Martyn, may not remain invincible.
Asking the home crowd not to have any unrealistic expectations, Clarke told the Courier Mail, “I think the Australian public has taken the Australian cricket team’s form for granted because we have had so many great players and they have performed so good for 10-15 years.”
“I think it is unrealistic now and I think that has shown recently. We didn’t win the Twenty20 World Cup. We only won 4-2 in the Indian one-day series and that was a tough series. I hope we win every game we play, but the reality is it can’t happen.”
Clarke said: “We have two very strong teams coming here and we have to give credit to other sides in the world who are playing very good cricket.”
“I believe it’s going to be very different this summer to the past ones. It’s going to be very tough. But I’m really looking forward to the new generation of youth coming through,” he added. Both India and Sri Lanka are slated to tour Australia in the next few months.
Australia’s batsmen say facing Harbhajan Singh during the recent tour of India provided the best possible practice for playing against Sri Lankan spinner Muralitharan.