Waugh's Aussies happy with one-horse race

The International Cricket Council's Test world championship has been a great success since last year's launch but unreliable reports from badly placed sources suggest it is already set to be replaced with a two-tier system.

From 2002 -- so it is said without foundation -- Australia will be promoted from the championship into a one-team elite division, allowing Steve Waugh's men to play back-to-back home-and-away series amongst themselves while leaving the rest of the world in peace.

The other nine teams, meanwhile, will be grouped in a second division, with the winners each year gaining the honour of a shared net session or two with the Australians and having their photographs taken with them before being immediately relegated to whence they came.

Australia's stranglehold over world cricket was underlined in Melbourne last week when they hammered South Africa for the second time to take a 2-0 lead in their three-Test series.

Their encounter had been much-hyped as a title bout to decide, once and for all, who merits the world crown.

In the end, it was more super-heavyweight versus underfed, gloveless straw-weight.

The peculiarly off-colour South Africans, with pace bowler Allan Donald in semi-retirement and no spin threat worthy of mention, barely got in a jab before they were floored, by 246 runs in Adelaide and by nine wickets in the second mismatch.

TOTALLY INFERIOR

Bruised South African captain Shaun Pollock didn't bother to camouflage the gulf. "We've been inferior to them in all parts," he said.

Waugh's team, who racked up a world-record 16 Test wins in a row early last year, are a team for all seasons and all surfaces, it seems, invincible at home, near-unbeatable away.

They score faster, bowl tighter, catch better -- and apparently train harder -- than anyone else.

Occasionally, they try to level the playing field a little, sending their best coaches abroad while continuously pushing their pre-match plans under the hotel doors of rival players and journalists to give them a sneak preview of what is to come.

It doesn't seem to help. Perhaps they should try and squeeze Shane Warne under the door instead.

At the moment, there is only one side which could probably test Australia -- Australia A (remember 1994/95, when Australia and Australia A contested a one-day tournament final after first eliminating England and Zimbabwe? Australia won the final 2-0. One game went to the last ball, and the second to the last over).

Waugh, meanwhile, says he intends to keep matters as they are. Asked if he thought Australia's supremacy could be damaging to the game, he did not hesitate.

"Na, mate. We just look after things in our backyard and keep trying to improve."

The quicker they are quarantined from the rest of world cricket, the better.

CRITICAL COACH

It would be cruel to suggest a third division should be launched for Bangladesh.

Outclassed, they have played nine matches since joining the Test-playing nations, lost eight and been saved by the rain on the other occasion.

Their coach -- Trevor Chappell, an Australian of course -- led the criticism after they lost to New Zealand in December.

"They were bloody pathetic," he said.

But, as New Zealand captain Stephen Fleming pointed out, it took his nation 26 years to win their first Test, while Sri Lanka, the last to join the fold, needed 14 attempts.

So perhaps there is room for latitude. And, with 130 million people to select from in Bangladesh, some cause for optimism too.

To avoid unnecessary pain to all cricket fans, however, it might be worth keeping Australia and Bangladesh in opposite corners for a while longer yet.

Mail Cricket Editor