Intro:

Three former world cup winning Australian captains have backed current team leader Michael Clarke to embrace the pressure of playing at home as they marked the 100 days before the start of the ICC Cricket World Cup in Sydney on Thursday (November 6th).

Script:

SOUNDBITE (English) Steve Waugh, Former Australia captain

"I think don't focus too much on the end prize of actually winning the world cup. Sometimes you can get carried away , we got to win the world cup, its at home, its the biggest event every four years, which is all true. Just got to focus on the next game you play. Slowly build the momentum, couple of times we got ourselves into trouble was when we focussed on thinking that we got to win the world cup. That will happen if you play good cricket. You just have to break it down and keep it really simple in the world cups".

SOUNDBITE (English) Ricky Ponting, Former Australia captain

"It does actually, even sitting with the other captains and seeing Michael here today, it's really exciting times. You start counting down the days, they still got a lot of cricket to play though, they got other things to be concentrating right at the minute, but it is exciting times, exciting times for the country and exciting times for New Zealand. So as i said on the stage, some of my great memories of the game are from world cups, Australia have a proud record of world cups, and we hope that the boys can continue the run this year".

SOUNDBITE (English) Alan Border, Former Australia captain

"I suppose just to embrace the pressure and expectations rather than try to duck and leave. I think in '92 the preparation, we didn't think long and hard about how important the world cup was in the preparation that we needed. We were a good side at the time and one of the favourites. But the advise to Michael would be to just get that preparation right, i think he has talked about trying to get that final 15 settled as early as possible and get those lead up games under your belt. And obviously you can hit the ground running which is something we didn't do in 1992. Yeah just embrace the whole concept that its going to be very exciting playing at home".