Michael Holding, the former West Indies fast bowler, has said that the changes Australia has made in the wake of the sweeping Argus reviewwere necessary. "If you think that something is working for you and you don't need to change, while everything around you is changing, you will get left behind. So Australia had to change," Holding told AAP.
"When things work a particular way for a long time, people tend to think 'it has been working, don't change it - if it ain't broke, don't fix it'.
"It might work for a long time. But all the wealthy people will tell you, if you don't change when things are changing around you, people will go past you and you are no longer a millionaire. You lose all the fortune you have got - the same thing with sport.
Holding, who was part of the all-conquering West Indies team of the 1980s, said that it was not surprising that teams slip after dominating for an extended period of time and expects India to struggle as well in the future. "You see Australia going through that right now," he said. "And I can tell you India, two years from now, won't be in the top five either. I think you get complacent when you are winning and, if you don't follow a plan, it (a fall) will happen."
He also felt that the kind of dominance established by West Indies and Australia would not be repeated again because of how much easier technology has made it to study opponents. "Those days are over. You could never dominate for 15 years. It is impossible for any team to dominate for that period of time - when I say dominate, I mean win everything.
"You can be the top-ranked team for a decade as Australia was but, even in that decade, Australia lost some series. Because the technology available to people now, where you can study the opposition, where you can plan and use all the graphics and all the technology ... you can't dominate like that again."
ESPN Cricinfo
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