'One of the finest innings in World Cup history'

In 11 editions of the ICC Cricket World Cup, there have been dominant batsmen who have etched their names into cricketing folklore thanks to monumental individual efforts.

Clive Lloyd’s century to take the Calypso Kings to the inaugural title, Kapil Dev’s 175 not out against Zimbabwe that paved the way for their 1983 triumph and Aravinda De Silva’s unbeaten 107 that earned him man-of-the-match in Sri Lanka’s 1996 title victory are all in the upper echelon.

But the mantle goes to dual-World Cup winning captain Ricky Ponting, according to former Australia coach John Buchanan.

Ponting – playing in his first tournament as captain and with the pressure of completing back-to-back tournament victories – hit 140 not out in the final at Johannesburg against India.

The mammoth knock included four fours and a whopping eight sixes, as the skipper combined with Damien Martyn for an unbeaten third wicket stand of 234.

“Ricky Ponting probably (played) one of the finest innings in World Cup history given the situation,” said Buchanan.

“You’d go a long way to find better.”

“As captain … leading by the front and leading by example, taking the attack, both to the spin and the quick bowlers of India … at the end of a long tournament. Probably hard to go past that one.”

Ponting scored 415 runs at 51.87 as the Australians went undefeated through the tournament – a feat they replicated in 2007.

In the first of those campaigns, everyone expected the defending champions to come undone – especially with the spin king Shane Warne ruled out on the eve of the first match against Pakistan – but each win in the tournament built momentum.

“While we were undefeated, everybody was saying therefore we should be due to lose a game. My response was always … if we play well, why wouldn’t we just keep winning?” Buchanan said.

“It became pretty clear to me that we had done a lot of good things to get to where we got to but the game didn’t owe us anything.

“(The message was) we have an opposition to play and it’s back to what we do well and we have to deliver that on the day.”

Although the Australians only equalled the feat of the West Indies in 1975 and 1979, the 2003 competition had twice as many games as the first two editions.

Australia used 14 players throughout the tournament which saw the emergence of Andrew Symonds and exceptional performances from unsung hero Andy Bichel.

“Andrew (Symonds) was exactly the person we needed over there … for his skill set and he was an incredible team man,” said Buchanan.

“(Andy Bichel) is always a huge competitor … great person around the team and always put himself in a position to be picked.”

Buchanan – who has the highest winning percentage of matches of any coach in both Test and ODI formats – said his entire squad played a part in the tournament victory.

“One of the reasons why you win tournaments is the depth of the group that you have … everybody works together to achieve an end point … it was a good group and we achieved some special things.”