By Malcolm Wilcox, England

I had to laugh when I heard Australia’s players moaning about fatigue after losing to India. Is this the team that didn’t play a Test from January to November last year?

Come on. I don’t know who is writing their scripts but this is sour grapes at its worst. Why can’t the Aussies learn to lose gracefully? Even when England were beating them in 2005, Ricky Ponting got all upset at the way England were using Gary Pratt as an expert sub fielder as if it was some cunning plot.

Fair enough it has been a long home season for the Australians and I take Ponting’s point about not many players changing over between Test and the one-dayers but they still have had more rest and recovery time than most teams. After winning the World Cup last year they didn’t have any more cricket for months. How England’s players would have relished the same rest.

Australia has probably had more rest than most teams in the last 12 months yet here we are again, heaving to listen to their bleating after losing the Commonwealth Bank Series for the second year running. Ponting even said that they peaked too early for the second year running after doing the same to England last year. I am never too sure about this concept. What can teams do differently? Let the opposition win the first few games and then try their hardest?

Maybe I am a biased Pom but I like to think I am fair-minded and have always given credit to Australia for playing the great cricket that they do and have done for so long. But when I hear this rubbish I just cannot help but say something.

Look at the amount of cricket England have to play: Go back to 2006. From a tour of India, straight into a five-month home season, from there straight to India for the ICC Champions Trophy, from there straight into the small matter of an Ashes series against an Aussie team snarling to win back the urn, from there straight to the World Cup for the best part of two months, from there, back into another five-month home season, before the Twenty20 World Cup and then two tours of Sri Lanka. Oh, here we have it…at last…a break. Yes they managed to spend Christmas and NEW Year with their families but no soon as they had thanked their spouses for the new pair of socks and they were back on a flight to New Zealand,before the five-month home season…I think you get the message.

Even when the Aussies do get the chance to grab a few weeks rest, what do they do? They go off to India and pick up easy money in the IPL. You can’t blame them but don’t complain about fatigue. Please.

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"Congrats, I could not have said it any better, everything you said I agree with you 100 per cent. I totally agree with you that Aussies are sore losers, they cannot accept defeat. I am so glad India thrashed them. They deserved to lose, but being the world champs they should be setting an example on the field but instead they showed how vulnerable they are. They dish it out but they cannot take it when they are treated in the same manner. Aussies should get over themselves because they are no longer the best in the world" - (from Rennie Bissodut)