SYDNEY, August 24 Matthew Hayden says Australia are the leading cricketing team in the world because its players play as a team whereas cricketers from the sub-continent, including India, play for personal milestones.

Hayden believes many sub-continental players bat too selfishly for their team’s good and this is what explains Australia’s recent dominancein one-day cricket.

The opener said a crucial difference between his side and their sub-continental rivals was that Australian batsmen were more willing to risk personal milestones for the sake of team run rate, according to a report in the Sydney Morning Herald. ‘‘In one-day cricket, if you get to 70 or 80, you can obviously get a hundred by just batting carefully but we just don’t do that. It affects a batsman’s statistics but we just don’t go for those personal marks,’’ he said.

‘‘Counties like India suffer from that. We back ourselves against those countries because they’ll get two or three players in the 70s and beyond and they’ll be eyeing off that personal landmark and it will cost their side 40 or 50 runs as a result. Pretty much all the sub-continental sides are like that. They really can waste a lot of time and there’s no time to waste. Every ball has got to have a priority stamp on it,’’ Hayden said.