It could be the most one-sided test match in cricket history when top-rated Australia and bottom-ranked Bangladesh meet for the first time today.
Some Australian bookmakers are offering odds of about 17-to-1 that Australia will romp to victory on the first day.
Steve Waugh thinks otherwise.
"From our point of view we are very happy to go out there and play a proper game of cricket, respect the opposition," Australia's veteran captain said yesterday after training at Darwin's Marrara Oval pitch.
"It's not going to be as easy as people talk about so we're prepared for a tough test match."
But even though Bangladesh is ranked last out of the world's 10 test-playing nations, world No. 1 Australia will not temper its take-no-prisoners approach in the two-test series.
"A lot of our test matches finish in less than five days so that is our goal -- to finish the test match off as quickly as we can," Waugh said.
"I don't know when that's going to be -- it may go in their favor -- but that's our plan always to go into a test match play aggressive positive cricket and try to finish it early.''
Bangladesh captain and all-rounder Khaled Mahmud said his team would not be overawed by Waugh's all-conquering team during the two-test series in northern Australia.
"It is just another game, just another test series for us," he said. "We are not too nervous."
Mahmud brushed off the speculation of a lopsided contest.
"We don't think about it too much," he said.
"We just think about what we want to improve and we want to improve our individual performances."
Bangladesh's Australian-born coach, Dav Whatmore, said winning wasn't everything for cricket's least developed nation.
Whatmore, a former test batsman who coached Sri Lanka to a World Cup victory in 1996, said he is trying to teach his talented young squad that test cricket involves graft, not just glory shots.
"I am not all that happy when certain batsmen take soft options and don't want to fight it out," he said.
"There is no disgrace if you do get beaten against a team like Australia, not in my mind. As long as these boys are really keen to improve their own game by going about it the right way."
So far on its tour of Australia, Bangladesh has performed fairly well -- bouncing back from a loss in its first match to record back-to-back victories, including last-week's low-scoring encounter against the Northern Territory Chief Minister's XI captained by up and coming New South Wales batsman Michael Clarke.
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
Rafael Nadal on Wednesday said the upcoming French Open would be the moment to “give everything and die” on the court after his comeback from injury in Barcelona was curtailed by Alex de Minaur. The 22-time Grand Slam title winner, back playing this week after three months on the sidelines, battled well, but eventually crumbled 7-5, 6-1 against the world No. 11 from Australia in the second round. Nadal, 37, who missed virtually all of last season, is hoping to compete at the French Open next month where he is the record 14-time champion. The Spaniard said the clash with De Minaur was
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but