SYDNEY - The Australian cricket team leave for the Caribbean today, with skipper Ricky Ponting believing the defending champions deserve World Cup favouritism despite suffering five successive one-day defeats.
The Australians were to leave home excited about their chances of winning an unprecedented third consecutive World Cup followingthe return of a clutch of key players, including Ponting, vice-captain Adam Gilchrist, allrounder Andrew Symonds and batsman Michael Clarke.
The injured quartet all missed the recent Chappell-Hadlee Trophy series in New Zealand as Australia suffered an inglorious 0-3 series defeat at the hands of their trans-Tasman rivals, just one week after losing 0-2 to England in the tri-series finals.
Although Symonds (shoulder) and record-breaking opener Matthew Hayden (toe) will miss the opening matches of the World Cup, Ponting today insisted a full-strength Australia were still the team to beat in the West Indies.
"I can't see why not. I'm really happy with the squad of players that we've got," Ponting said at Sydney airport.
"There's been a bit of negativity around the team over the last couple of weeks, but I guess that's to be expected when you're not playing your absolute best and we certainly haven't done that.
"But we've had up to six or seven of our top 11 players out as well, which probably hasn't been reported that much over the last couple of weeks.
"I'm looking forward to it. I know there's a big challenge ahead for the players. It doesn't get any bigger than a World Cup so if we can't lift ourselves up and play some good cricket in this, we never will.
"We've got some work to do, no doubt, and we've got some talking to do about our cricket (tactics) as well. But we'll get that done very early and I know that we're going to be extremely hard to beat.
"I know now that we're drifting favourites but, once the cricket gets underway, hopefully you'll see some cricket that's going to mean that we still are the favourites going in."
Australia play Scotland in their opening match on March 14 in St Kitts and Nevis.
