Who’s Australia’s best sporting workforce of all time?
Australia’s girls’s cricket workforce put their identify into that dialogue after including one other trophy to their overflowing cupboard with victory within the T20 World Cup final month.
The Aussies have had a golden 12 months, profitable each the ODI and T20 World Cups together with gold on the Commonwealth Video games in Birmingham.
They’ve gained the final three T20 World Cups and have gained each ODI and T20 trophy since dropping to India within the semi-finals of the 2017 ODI World Cup.
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However are they one of the best workforce, girls’s or males’s, of the trendy period?
That’s the controversy Australian swimming star Cate Campbell has sparked after she argued our girls’s 4x100m freestyle relay workforce are literally one of the best workforce of all time.
Campbell was requested on the Right here If You Want podcast if our girls’s cricket workforce are “one of the best workforce of the trendy period?”
The swimmer instantly replied: “No.”
“They’re implausible, phenomenal,” she stated of the cricketers.
“Sixth win, it was their third in a row. Are they one of the best workforce of all time? No. Sorry.
“Look, I may be a bit bit biased if we return and have a look at the details, I really feel just like the details are going to again me up. If we have a look at the ladies’s 4x100m freestyle relay workforce, they’re just about probably the most dominant workforce within the trendy world in that occasion.
“We’ve got damaged world information. We’re the one workforce that has damaged the world file in that occasion since 2009, which was a world file set by supersuits, which improved individuals’s performances like loopy.
“We broke the world file in 2014, 2016, 2020. We’ve gained it on the previous three Olympic Video games.
“I’m not simply saying this as a result of I’ve been part of it. It’s by far probably the most dominant workforce on the earth in the intervening time, I’d argue.
“We shouldn’t examine. We must always have fun everybody. But when we’re going to examine, swimming wins.”
Campbell has some extent. Let’s break their achievements down.
The ladies’s 4x100m relay workforce profitable gold medals and breaking world information has turn into as dependable as loss of life and taxes.
Even at Australia’s disastrous 2012 London Olympic swimming marketing campaign, the Aussie girls nonetheless managed to choose up our solely gold medal within the pool.
They backed it up in Rio and Tokyo, with Campbell the one fixed within the workforce that claimed a hat-trick of Olympic golds.
Brittany Elmslie (2012, 2016) gained two golds, as has Bronte Campbell (2016, 2021) and Australia’s most profitable Olympian Emma McKeon (2016, 2021).
The Australians are Olympic, World and Commonwealth champions and maintain the world file in each the 50m and 25m swimming pools.
They haven’t been overwhelmed in any lengthy course competitors since 2013 when the USA pipped them by 0.12sec on the World Championships.
With the Campbell sisters taking a break from swimming earlier than gearing up for the Paris Olympics, the conveyor belt of expertise has saved on rolling.
Meg Harris was the fourth swimmer within the relay in Tokyo, whereas Madi Wilson and Mollie O’Callaghan gained gold as warmth swimmers and Shayna Jack might be part of them for Paris.
To place it that dominance into context, Australia’s males haven’t gained an Olympic relay gold because the days of Ian Thorpe and Michael Klim in 2000.
There are some similarities between our all-conquering swimming and cricket groups.
Similar to the Campbell sisters and McKeon, skipper Meg Lanning has been a typical thread all through the World Cup triumphs, together with Ellyse Perry and Alyssa Healy.
However the Aussies have additionally regenerated, with the likes of Tahlia McGrath, Ash Gardner, Alanna King and Darcie Brown coming by to help the veterans.
There’s an argument Australia has professionalised girls’s cricket sooner than different international locations, who’re nonetheless taking part in catch up.
Alternatively, not each nation on the earth has the identical swimming tradition as us, however Australia nonetheless has a smaller inhabitants to attract on at Olympics in comparison with juggernauts just like the USA.
There are different groups that lay declare to being Australia’s most dominant workforce.
The Hockeyroos of the Nineteen Nineties, led by legendary coach Ric Charlesworth that gained every thing attainable together with two Olympic golds, additionally deserve a point out.
On the boys’s aspect, the Australian cricket workforce of the late Nineteen Nineties and 2000s led by Steve Waugh and Ricky Ponting needs to be our greatest ever workforce.
And the beloved Matildas are in glorious kind and will leapfrog all of them by profitable the FIFA World Cup at residence later this yr.
