But the failure of Mark Taylor and his men to earn a single point in five league games of the Cup (its solitary point came when rain washed out a scheduled game against India) will not bother it, so much as the inability of one of its bowlers to come good in an inconsequential match in Melbourne recently.

As the Australian national side strived heroically to toss away won games, Shane Warne turned out for his Melbourne club, St Kilda, in a routine game. He bowled 18 overs. He got one solitary wicket. And to add insult to evident injury, a little known tailender with no pretensions to batsmanship carted the feared leggie over the ropes, not once but four times.

In a better ordered world, the story would have been different. A stray hit for six would have been met by a shake of the head, a look of determination on the face... and a delivery that would pitch just outside leg stump, snake in with all the viciousness of a teased rattler and peg back off stump.

Not this time, though - Warne, who during his 18 over spell had to leave the field several times in order to ice his spinning finger, replied with gentle, front of the hand stuff that held no terrors even for non-recognised, club class batsmen.

The word is that the ace leggie's spinning finger - the crucial digit that he had injured earlier in the ear, and for corrective surgery to which Warne was forced to miss Australia's ill-starred tour of India - is about twice the size it should be.

In other words, the operation has not worked.

And that is a major blow to a side that depends on Warne to provide the breakthroughs - all the more so on the eve of the five-Test series against the West Indies for the Frank Worrell Trophy.

Australia had given the West Indies its first series defeat in decades when it captured the trophy 2-1 - and now the Windies have landed Down Under with a good team and a thirst for revenge.

The Aussies need Warne to combat Brian Lara and his fellows. But it looks like Warne might, at best, be a passenger; at worst, a spectator.

Kerry James O'Keefe, the right arm leg spinner unfortunate enough to be playing his cricket in the pace-centric late seventies dominated by Dennis Lillee, Jeff Thompson, Max Walker and such, is one of those who finds it incredible that Warne opted for surgery.

O'Keefe in his playing days suffered a similar injury - to the knuckle of his spinner finger - and played on for six more seasons with the help of cortisone injections calculated to break up the calcification of the bone. ``It's simple wear and tear, and with the injections you never feel another twinge,'' the former leggie said.

But the spotlight is on the here and now, and Warne prepares to take on the Windies with a dodgy finger, and prescription pain-killers.

It couldn't have happened at a worse time. There is no argument that the series against the Windies is going to be one hard, gruelling grind. While lacking the flair and marquee value of the great sides led by first Clive Lloyd, and then Vivian Richards, the current outfit is made up of good, solid players with the likes of Lara and Ambrose providing the cutting edge, while the young Chanderpaul, the ebullient Hooper, and the lethal Walsh make good support acts.

If there is one area where the Windies are vulnerable, it is in its chronic inability to adjust to top quality spin - and if Warne is not on song, then Taylor doesn't have any other options in his arsenal. Brad Hogg and Peter McIntyre are hardly in the same class, and there are no other promising talents coming through.

And to cap it all off, Australia goes into the series with very little time to recover from a gruelling odyssey across the length and breadth of the vast Indian sub-continent - a tour not only physically demanding but, thanks to a streak of five matches played, five lost (not to mention another defeat in the one-off Test), psychologically sap- ping.

Thus, just when the players need to be at their peak, they are carrying niggling physical injuries. The question is, can they put body and mind back together in time?

An even more important question is, will Shane Warne strike, just when Australia needs him most?

We'll know, soon enough.