AUSTRALIA: CRICKET - The Australian cricket team comes home after winning the Cricket World Cup finals in Barbados

Australia's triumphant cricketers arrived home on Thursday (May 3) with the World Cup in their arms after their victory in the West Indies. Captain Ricky Ponting and his squad were greeted by family, friends and a large media scrum when they touched down at Sydney Airport around dawn. Australia won the World Cup for the fourth time, and for the third time in a row after beating Sri Lanka in Sunday's (April 29) final in Barbados. The game was marked by a chaotic ending when the umpires mistakenly called the players back to contest the last three overs when the match should have already been declared finished. "Celebrations were long and hard, which is what they should be after you win a World Cup," Ponting told a news conference in Sydney. "I haven't got a jock strap, but that doesn't mean I was nude either," said coach John Buchanan. The Australians hardly raised a sweat as they coasted through the whole tournament undefeated but Ponting said the relative ease of their win and the farcical finish had failed to dampen their celebrations. "I think when everybody thought, that gap was probably coming back, maybe Australia weren't even the best team in world one day cricket anymore I think we've just gone ahead now and even widened that gap. So it's up to opposition countries to address that fact and maybe look at what we're doing and the way they're playing their cricket and trying to make sure the next time they come up against us they could compete even better than they have this time," said Ponting about the competitiveness of the tournament. Even the ICC chief officials had accepted a criticism about the length of the tournament. "Depends how many teams you are playing to start with, to start with. I think this World Cup we had two more than the last time around, and this World Cup was maybe about ten days longer I think than the last one was, so look I don't know if there is any ideal time. This World Cup, most World Cup events are traditionally been a lot longer than what you're used to paying in other World Cup tournaments, so it's about managing that time well I think, and I think there was lot of negativity about how long the World Cup was, probably rightly so to some certain degree, but we enjoyed ourselves, we played some great cricket and we got and had a chance to prepare well," said Ponting. Asked if the Australian team would travel to Zimbabwe for test games under the rule of internationally condemned Robert Mugabe, Gilchrist said: "We haven't even thought about it yet, and we realised this that there is reasonable issues there, people if they strongly feel one way or another, so we will address those issues over time and I am sure Cricket Australia are obviously very aware of it, and already working on it, but from a players perspective, we'll just get through this first and when it starts to get closer we'll be brought up to speed." And he still wants to play despite retirement rumours. "I am certainly not, still love it, still keen to play, not a time when you're really high on emotion or down and flat at the end of 2005 Ashes we were all at rock bottom, so they're not the times to make decisions on these things but I am certain enough that I've got every intention of playing next summer," said Gilchrist.

ITN Source | May 4, 2007

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