500 and beyond beckons Aussies

By John Cheeran
One of the questions that game’s followers are asking will most likely to be answered today when defending champions Australia flex their muscles against Scotland, a non-Test playing nation.
No team has touched the high watermark of 500 runs in an innings in a one-day international contest. The story so far has been falling short of 450 mark.
This World Cup poised to offer you so many mismatches, 500 and beyond are in the realms of possible. Aussies, under the leadership of Ricky Ponting, are impatient to assert their supreme status after the reverses against England at home and New Zealand in their den.
For them it does not matter whether it is lions or lambs is being brought on the slaughter board.If a side goes beyond 500m, one might as well see a double century for the first time in one-day internationals.
All these are possible.
Provided, Ponting wins the toss and decides to bat first. So the most crucial moment of the Australia-Scotland game ought to be the half-an hour before the first ball is bowled when both skippers go out to the field to toss the coin.
The Scotland skipper may be advised to bat first if he wins the toss. In fact, having decided to open the doors of the World Cup for outfits such as Scotland, the International Cricket Council should have put in a rider to other Test nations that they should only bat second in the contests against cricket’s parvenus.
That would have prevented these inevitable encounters from deteriorating into unwatchable farces.