Who is Australia’s best sporting crew of all time?
Australia’s girls’s cricket crew 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, successful each the ODI and T20 World Cups together with gold on the Commonwealth Games in Birmingham.
They’ve received the final three T20 World Cups and have received each ODI and T20 trophy since dropping to India within the semi-finals of the 2017 ODI World Cup.
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But are they the perfect crew, girls’s or males’s, of the fashionable period?
That’s the talk Australian swimming star Cate Campbell has sparked after she argued our girls’s 4x100m freestyle relay crew are literally the perfect crew of all time.
Campbell was requested on the Here If You Need podcast if our girls’s cricket crew are “the best team of the modern era?”
The swimmer instantly replied: “No.”
“They are fantastic, phenomenal,” she stated of the cricketers.
“Sixth win, it was their third in a row. Are they the best team of all time? No. Sorry.
“Look, I might be a little bit biased if we go back and look at the facts, I feel like the facts are going to back me up. If we look at the women’s 4x100m freestyle relay team, they are pretty much the most dominant team in the modern world in that event.
“We have broken world records. We’re the only team that has broken the world record in that event since 2009, which was a world record set by supersuits, which improved people’s performances like crazy.
“We broke the world record in 2014, 2016, 2020. We’ve won it at the past three Olympic Games.
“I’m not just saying this because I’ve been a part of it. It is by far the most dominant team in the world at the moment, I would argue.
“We shouldn’t compare. We should celebrate everyone. But if we are going to compare, swimming wins.”
Campbell has some extent. Let’s break their achievements down.
The girls’s 4x100m relay crew successful gold medals and breaking world information has change into as dependable as dying and taxes.
Even at Australia’s disastrous 2012 London Olympic swimming marketing campaign, the Aussie girls nonetheless managed to select up our solely gold medal within the pool.
They backed it up in Rio and Tokyo, with Campbell the one fixed within the crew that claimed a hat-trick of Olympic golds.
Brittany Elmslie (2012, 2016) received 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 report in each the 50m and 25m swimming pools.
They haven’t been crushed 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 received gold as warmth swimmers and Shayna Jack might be part of them for Paris.
To put it that dominance into context, Australia’s males haven’t received 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.
Just just like 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.
But the Aussies have additionally regenerated, with the likes of Tahlia McGrath, Ash Gardner, Alanna King and Darcie Brown coming by means of to help the veterans.
There’s an argument Australia has professionalised girls’s cricket sooner than different nations, who’re nonetheless taking part in catch up.
On the opposite hand, 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 crew.
The Hockeyroos of the Nineties, led by legendary coach Ric Charlesworth that received the whole lot potential together with two Olympic golds, additionally deserve a point out.
On the boys’s aspect, the Australian cricket crew of the late Nineties and 2000s led by Steve Waugh and Ricky Ponting needs to be our greatest ever crew.
And the beloved Matildas are in glorious type and will leapfrog all of them by successful the FIFA World Cup at residence later this yr.
Originally printed as ‘Are they the best team of all time? No’: Cate Campbell sparks Aussie crew GOAT debate
Source: www.dailytelegraph.com.au
