It has taken a long time but Shane Watson - now such an integral part of the Australian side - finally got the chance to celebrate his 100th one-day international in style on Sunday night and now has set his sights on being part of an unbeaten team this summer.
Nearly eight years after he made his one-day international debut in South Africa in March 2002, the 28-year-old - who has finally buried his injury-plagued reputation this season in what has been a golden summer - enjoyed a milestone game to remember in game one of the Commonwealth Series against West Indies at the MCG.
Not only was he named man-of-the-match after carving out a match-high score of 59 on a difficult batting wicket but he was part of a team that enjoyed a thumping 113-run win.
Such was Australia's dominance that it would now be a major surprise if it did not complete another 5-0 clean sweep of the West Indies in this one-day series after having recently done so against Pakistan.
And that was on top of 2-0 and 3-0 Test series victories against the West Indies and Pakistan respectively earlier this summer, as well as last Friday night's two-run win over Pakistan in a Twenty20 international.
With the Windies struggling to cover the absence of star batsmen Shivnarine Chanderpaul and Ramnaresh Sarwan, all-rounder Dwayne Bravo and pacemen Fidel Edwards and Jerome Taylor as well as suspended spinner Sulieman Benn, Watson admits the Aussies are beginning to eye off the prospect of an unbeaten summer with four one-day and two Twenty20 matches remaining against the Windies before they head to New Zealand at the end of the month.
"That (was a motivating factor) even at the start of the summer from the start of the Test matches," Watson said of the chance to remain unbeaten.
"(Skipper) Ricky (Ponting) talked to us about it at start of summer about trying to do everything we could to go through every game with a win."
"Unfortunately we weren't able to do that in the (drawn) Adelaide Test (against the Windies) but throughout the rest of the summer we have played good cricket and things have worked out really well for us so far this summer."
As for his 100-game milestone, Watson said he was not even aware of it until just before play got underway.
"I only realised when (keeper) Brad Haddin mentioned it to me before the game," he said.
"I hadn't been paying attention to actually how many games I had played so of course it was a really special moment to get to 100 games."
"It's something that seemed a long way off in the last couple of years and to be able to play 100 games and contribute the way I did in my 100th was nice as well."
Beaten West Indies skipper Chris Gayle vowed his team would quickly rebound from such a disappointing first-up performance.
"It's not the start we wanted to have in this series," he said.
"But having said that, the damage is done now and it's back to square one and we are actually looking forward to (game two in) Adelaide (on Tuesday night)."
"It's a chance to square the series and to get back into the series as quickly as possible."
The one positive for the Windies on Sunday night was all-rounder Kieron Pollard, who carried on his stunning form for South Australia in the recent KFC Big Bash competition by not only taking his career-best one-day international figures of 3-45 but also top-scoring with the bat for the Windies with 31.