April 4, 2003	Friday	Safar 1, 1424

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BRIDGETOWN (Barbados), April 3: The all-conquering and awesome Australian outfit, minus pace spearhead Glen McGrath and batsman Damien Martyn arrived in the Caribbean on Wednesday night confident of double triumph against West Indies in four-Test cricket series and subsequent seven One-day Internationals.

Not only are Steve Waugh-led Aussies determined to hand the regional cricketers, under new captain Brian Lara, a whipping on home soil following their 5-0 white-wash Down Under two years ago, they are eager to reclaim their No 1 position on official International Cricket Council’s (ICC) rankings.

“Obviously, we would like to change that ranking and have opportunity to do that if we played well against West Indies on this tour,” coach John Buchanan said at Grantley Adams International Airport while Australians were intransit to Guyana, where first Test starts at Georgetown Cricket Club, Bourda on April 10.

The Australians will have just a solitary three-day game against Carib Beer XI at weekend but the highly successful coach is not worried.

“Most of the players have played domestic cricket up until recently or have been involved in World Cup so in terms of amount of cricket, that’s sufficient. It’s really now just a case of getting back into framework over longer game and one game should be sufficient to do that,” Buchanan contended.

But he noted that despite Australians’ winning streak in Test cricket in recent years, a series in the Caribbean is always a difficult assignment.

“We are looking for a hard-fought series. We haven’t played Test cricket for a little while and obviously, we have just come off a World Cup win but that’s history now. It’s now time to play some very good Test cricket and that’s what we want to do, right from first Test,” Buchanan remarked.

“It is always difficult when a team goes to a visiting country. I think Stephen Waugh’s last Test series here which was his first as captain, it was two-all so it is always a very hard-fought contest and we don’t expect anything different this time,” he noted.

On non-arrival of Martyn, who remained in Australia to receive further treatment to a finger injury sustained in World Cup and McGrath, who returned to Australia to be with his sick wife, Jane, after travelling with the team to London, Buchanan said it appears both are likely to miss opening Test.

“Neither of those two would be available for the first Test,” Buchanan said.

“With Glenn, we will just have to wait and see how personal circumstances turn out and hope they turn out very well which means, hopefully he will rejoin the tour at some stage.”

Damien Martyn will be joining just prior to first Test so he will be acclimatising and getting ready and hopefully making himself available for the second Test,” he added.

He said absence of McGrath, in particular, at the start of tour, will be a setback but other fast bowlers are capable of rising to the challenge.

“Glenn is obviously one of great bowlers in world cricket today and will be in history so it is a big blow for us to miss Glenn,” Buchanan said.

“However, we got some very very able back-up with Brett Lee and hopefully Jason Gillespie comes through okay. Andy Bichel and Ashley Noffke so we are overly confident that those players, while not certainly in calibre of McGrath, will be able to fill those big shoes of his.”

He said Australians have bowling ammunition to handle pitches in the Caribbean once they are conducive for good cricket.

“Pitches always have a habit of impacting on the series but hopefully, we will experience reasonably good cricket wickets (pitches) which give some assistance to batsmen, to bowlers, whether it be spin or quicks.

“I think we got a pretty balanced side. We got two spinners (Stuart MacGill and Brad Hogg) as well as our quick bowlers so regardless of wickets (pitches), we should be able to come up with a fairly balanced side,” he contended.

He said change in West Indies’ captaincy from Carl Hooper to Lara is not a concern for Australian camp.—PPI