As if they needed it, Australia's cricket stars have been given a pep talk by Britain's Olympic great Steve Redgrave on how to stay at the pinnacle of sporting success.

Australia's cricket captain Ricky Ponting said Thursday that Redgrave, staying in the same hotel as the cricket squad, had agreed to talk about the challenges in remaining a sporting super hero.

"Steve came and had a chat to us about him and his career on Tuesday afternoon: what he thought it took to become a high-class athlete, how he approached being a favorite going into events and how he really enjoyed that tag," Ponting said.

"He didn't like ever like being known as an underdog. He wanted to be the favorite, because in Olympic games 85 percent of favorites win gold medals. He always wanted to be one of those guys, he never wanted to be one of the 15 percent that had to try to cause some sort of upset.

"He talked about dealing with that, how he kept going and stayed in his sport as long as he did and the challenges that come with that," Ponting said.

Redgrave is Britain's greatest ever Olympian, winning five rowing gold medals between 1984 and 2000. He was age 38 by the time he won his last gold medal in Sydney in 2000, beating rowers 20 years his junior.

"Some of our older guys were very interested in racking his brains on those kind of issues," Ponting said.

Australia, holders of the World Cup and bidding to win it for the third time, take on Ireland in a Super 8 contest at the Kensington Oval on Friday.

Ponting said Australia regularly looked outside cricket for motivation. The team's fielding coach, Mike Young, a former U.S. college baseball player, has worked with the team for several years as a fielding coach, turning them into the undisputed best fielders in the world.

Coach John Buchanan also invites athletes from other sports to mix with the team and to allow his players to glean knowledge from them.

"It's something we have tried to encourage, probably more so since John Buchanan became coach of the side," Ponting said. "To try to mix with different sporting groups and learn things from them if we can. Just listen to the words they use or their values or the way they go about things."

Although top scorer Matt Hayden said earlier this week that the World Cup was lasting too long, Ponting said Australian crickets were not allowed to become complacent.

"I really don't see how anyone who has ever played cricket for Australia can have been complacent in anything they have ever done," Ponting said.