England's start to the triangular one-day tournament began identically to the Ashes series with Matthew Hayden inspiring another emphatic triumph to leave the tourists still searching for a method to halt Australia's prolific opener.
Just as Hayden hit century in both innings during the first phase in Brisbane, he was the match-winner again today as Australia switched their talents to limited-overs cricket with equal success.
Hayden's brilliant 98 off only 92 balls allowed the world champions to quickly halt a vastly-improved England display and complete a seven-wickets victory with five overs to spare in the opening match of the triangular tournament at the Sydney Cricket Ground.
In doing so they cruised past England's respectable total of 251 for eight and successfully chased the third-highest total at this ground in history to once again establish their total dominance over the tourists, who slipped to their sixth-successive defeat and are now without a victory in 12 matches since they arrived in Australia on October 18.
The architect of most of those defeats has been Hayden, who helped himself to 376 runs in only four innings during the opening three Tests and underlined just how much work England still have to put in if they are to limit his effectiveness at this format of the game.
"We have to try and figure Hayden out, it's as simple as that," conceded England captain Nasser Hussain, whose side now move onto Melbourne for the second of their four one-day matches in eight days against Australia on Sunday.
"He's in great nick and he's got that arrogance about him at the moment that he's got nothing to lose because he's got so many runs under his belt. He feels he can belt any ball anywhere and with the batting line-up behind him, to have that confidence must be a great thing.
"It's a dangerous position to be in when you have an opposition player like that so full of confidence and we're going to have to go back to the drawing board and have another look at him - we tried a field today and that changed after three overs and we tried different fields but really it comes down to putting him under pressure by stopping him scoring."
That is easier said than done as today's performance underlined with Hayden quickly into his stride when Australia began their reply, marching down the pitch in the sixth over to launch Andrew Caddick over long off for six in only the sixth over.
He added another six later in his innings, which also included eight other boundaries, by doing the same to debutant off-spinner Gareth Batty, but it was his early onslaught which set the tone for Australia's emphatic triumph.
With Adam Gilchrist equally cavalier at the other end, they exploited wayward new ball spells from both James Kirtley and Caddick to race to a century partnership in only 13.2 overs and from that position Australia's formidable batting line-up were able to push the ball around comfortably to reach the victory target.
Even the loss of Gilchrist, caught at deep mid-wicket in Ronnie Irani's third over, failed to halt their run flow with Hayden progressing to within two runs of his century only to fall victim to a superb catch above his head at mid-off from Marcus Trescothick after he had driven left-arm spinner Ian Blackwell.
Disappointing as that was to miss a century, Hayden walked off to a standing ovation from the 36,687 crowd knowing he had once again provided Australia with such a solid foundation that victory was almost inevitable even after his departure with 17 overs to spare.
"We've chased a lot of big totals over the last 12 months and it's always started from the momentum of the opening partnership," explained Hayden.
"We're scoring up to seven or eight an over for the first 10 overs and I think that's a big chunk of the total to chase down and from there it's just a matter of playing good sensible cricket."
England, heavily beaten in each of their three warm-up one-day matches, at least had the consolation that they had competed during their innings with Nick Knight's unbeaten 111 providing the foundation for their competitive total.
The Warwickshire left-hander battled with cramp during the final five overs of the innings, forcing Owais Shah to act as a runner, having been forced to run singles and twos for the second half of his 133-ball stay at the crease after Australia effectively strangled England's boundary opportunities.
The innings had begun aggressively with Knight and Trescothick, who rode his luck after being dropped twice in the first six overs, sharing a 101-run partnership off as many deliveries to provide the tourists with a similar platform to the one established later in the day by Australia.
The big difference was the tourists' inability to build on that start with Trescothick, caught at slip cutting Brett Lee after passing 50 for only the second time in 15 innings on this tour and was quickly followed by Irani trapped leg before to Shane Warne.
Captain Nasser Hussain helped England rebuild with a 102-run partnership, but his dismissal with eight overs remaining triggered a collapse of six wickets for 44 runs in only nine overs.
The catalyst for that slump was the left-arm spin of Darren Lehmann, who claimed three wickets in six balls to remove Hussain, Blackwell and Shah and leave England 20 or 30 runs shy of a more competitive total.