Perth: How would have other teams fared?

After Pakistan's massive defeat at the hands of the Aussies at Perth in the first test, one is left to ponder as to what might have been the fate of other teams had they been playing in Perth instead of Pakistan?

If you look at the 5 tests that have been played at the WACA in the last 4 years, they have all been one sided encounters with Australia winning in all of them, with the exception of a test against New Zealand in 2000/2001 which was drawn - interesting Australia had almost the same attack in that test - Lee in place of Kasprowicz being the only change. The four times Australia has won, they have won by huge margins against the Windies, England and Zimbabwe - the largest margin being the loss inflicted on Zimbabwe - an innings and 100 odd runs. However, the point is that, had Australia not decided to enforce the follow-on in any of these matches and batted twice - the margin probably could have been as high as 500 runs - as was the case in this match.

Even the most die-hard Pakistani fans will admit that this Pakistani batting line-up is probably the weakest in recent times. With the exception of Inzy and Youhana, no other batsman could possibly walk into the top 6 of any of the other top 6 teams. In the past also, the Pakistani bowling has always been better than the batting, however the lack of quality in this line-up is very obvious. Through the years there have always been 3 -4 quality batsmen in the line-up. In the 90's, the team had Saeed Anwar, Aamir Sohail, Salim Malik, Ijaz Ahmad, Miandad, Inzy and Imran Khan. Never did they have to rely on only a couple of batsmen.

Looking around at the other top teams, I really do not see any team that could have halted the Aussie juggernaut at Perth. Perhaps, no other team would have collapsed for 72 in the second innings. But given that no other team could have potentially knocked the Aussie batting over for less, I have to admit that the result would have been pretty darn close to the one we had this week, had any other team played Australia at Perth instead of Pakistan.