Are Australia still the best?

So are Australia still the best Test side in the world? If they win the Super Series, you can bet that Ricky Ponting will not be backward in coming forward to reaffirm his team's pre-eminent status. But the six-day Test will tell us very little about Test cricket's world order. England's Ashes victory might have been good for the world game but it hasn't done much to enhance the Super Series as a spectacle.

This match ought to have been the ultimate challenge for the world's No. 1 side in a glorious showcase of the best talent on the planet. Instead, you have Australia, the wounded animal, desperate to reassert themselves against a random group of cricketers who have never played together before.

Australia will be so up for it as to make the contest potentially one-sided despite the obvious talent they will be facing. Had Australia beaten England, the chances are that the World XI players might have fancied it more than the Australians. The opposite now seems to be true.

The Super Series Test has the makings of a run-fest. Australia's bowling, as the Ashes showed, is under strength while the World XI's batting line-up drips with class. The bowling is a different proposition, maybe reflecting the general dominance of bat over ball as well as the fact that two of the best bowlers of the past decade are Australian. But of most concern is whether the World XI's quicker bowlers will be at full throttle.

Is Andrew Flintoff really going to tear in at 90mph as he did in the Ashes, with a Test series in Pakistan only a few weeks down the line? Will Shaun Pollock want to reveal a full hand against a side he has to face in back-to-back series either side of Christmas?

The most intriguing aspects of the match involve the spinners. How will the Australian crowds take to Murali and vice versa? And what about Darrell Hair? Has he got one last cat to throw among the pigeons? Then there is Shane Warne versus, well, pretty much all of them: Lara, Dravid, Inzamam, Flintoff. Forget the result - those are the battles where there is more than pride at stake. Warne loves to cultivate the idea there is this informal club of cricketing superstars of which he is naturally chairman and president. Witness all the Flintoff back-slapping during the Ashes.

So there is a slight danger that his personal duels with the great World XI batsmen will become sickly expressions of mutual respect between legends rather than full-on, hard-nosed competition. The Super Series is a tasty prospect on paper and I would like it to succeed. But it isn't a level playing field. One XI is a motivated team who play together all the time while the other is a scratch side with nothing to play for other than their own self-esteem and pots of cash.

The cricket might be entertaining, thrilling even, but will lack that edge which great sport needs. But, as an Englishman, I'm still looking forward to seeing Flintoff bowl at Adam Gilchrist, presumably round the wicket. And if he gets him cheaply for the fifth time in three months, I might struggle to keep a straight face.