World Cup Set For An Aussie Blockbuster

March 29 has been long marked in the calendar as a day of international movement. In: Smith and Warner to the Australian cricket team. Out: the United Kingdom from the European Union. Or so we thought until this week.

Now, thanks to the government’s chaotic handling of the Brexit melodrama, the status quo will likely remain – for a time, at least. As for the two naughty Australians, there is a now a debate as to whether they should automatically return to the national one-day side in the aftermath of their remarkable 3-2 win against India, coming back from two sets to love to register their first win there for a decade.

It was a year ago that the frazzled Australia side were making their way to Cape Town for the week that changed everything. Little did they know then that in the shadow of Table Mountain they were about to be truly humiliated, cricket in the country brought to its knees. This week, from seemingly nowhere, they are back in business.

After two rubbers in India, Aaron Finch’s side were looking down the barrel of their second five-zip whitewash inside nine months, the captain himself seemingly on the cusp of losing his job at the end of a nightmarish few months. Despite recent white-ball gains, they looked outmatched against Virat Kohli’s charges, who had won 12 of their last 13 ODI series.

The response to this win said plenty about where this team see themselves. When England defeated the West Indies in their T20s on the weekend, they huddled underneath umbrellas for the most rudimentary of celebration shots. By contrast, the images of the Australians looked like a team that had actually just won the World Cup.