Mumbai, Jan. 23: Winning streaks are on a losing streak, and it all started in Perth.

Anil Kumble’s avengers last week handed the Australians their first Test defeat in nearly three years — and ended the champions’ quest for a record 17th consecutive victory.

“It’s a horrible feeling,” said fast bowler Stuart Clark, who made his Test debut when Australia’s 16-match winning streak began against South Africa in March 2006.

Tell that to Justine Henin. She crashed out of the Australian Open on Tuesday, after 32 consecutive wins. The straight-sets loss to Maria Sharapova — 4-6 0-6 — in the quarter-finals was the biggest drubbing of a No. 1 seed in a Grand-Slam tournament for nine years. It was also the first defeat for the Belgian since the Wimbledon semi-finals last year.

Or to Arsenal, who got a shock 5-1 drubbing from old foes Tottenham Hotspur who hadn’t defeated them in 21 matches and nine years. Tuesday’s loss in the Carling Cup semi-final was the first against the Spurs since 1999 for the top-rung Premier League club.

“What goes up, comes down,” said Anshuman Gaekwad, former India coach. He could well have been talking of the sensex crash, which stopped an astonishing bull run in the markets, or the slide in the American economy that triggered it.

“The winning has to end somewhere. A better sportsman or a sports team will get the better of the best.”

Ricky Ponting and Henin accepted they were beaten by better opponents.

“She served great. She did everything well today,” the 25-year-old said of Sharapova in Melbourne. “She was much better than me.”

On Saturday, Ponting had said: “We haven’t been good enough.” He topped that up today with: “They’re great opponents.”

Gaekwad thinks complacency might have something to do with winning streaks ending. “When you are the No. 1 team all the time, you tend to be overconfident, arrogant, and complacency sets in at some point.... And when you become complacent, that’s what happens,” he said.

Psychologist Harish Shetty says losing once in a while is not such a bad thing. “Winning is a product of a lot of mental training, skills, abilities and team work. A win happens when the reflexes and the output of a team is maximised. But victory also leads to fatigue and boredom. The sense of joy gradually goes down, and to reinforce it every time is difficult,” he said.

In cricket, Don Bradman was perhaps the only one to keep up the momentum, Shetty added.

“Winning all the time is stressful. Throwing in the towel once in a while is healthy.”

But ask someone who’s been through it and he will tell you that humiliation is the price for health. Former India cricketer Ashok Mankad was part of a Mumbai Ranji Trophy team that had a record 15-match winning streak.

“We had an unbroken winning streak, and then we lost to Karnataka. We had never experienced defeat, and we were dumbfounded with the humiliation. We didn’t know what hit us,” Mankad allows himself a chuckle as he recalls the defeat in the early seventies.

Most of Ponting’s young team, new to losing, would understand the feeling.

Former cricket captain Bishen Singh Bedi puts a positive spin to it. “Every team wants to defeat you. The Australian team has been No. 1 for so long. When you win that consistently, it is natural for the rivals to play an inspired game.”

What when the winning run is halted?

“It proves difficult for the team to come out of the shadow of defeat,” says Gaekwad.

Ponting doesn’t think so. “The run was always going to come to an end at some stage,” he said. “It’s up to us to see how we bounce back in Adelaide.”

Tomorrow will tell if the Aussies can go back to their winning ways. The week will also test another winning streak — Roger Federer, two matches from his 13th Grand Slam title, is playing the Australian Open semi-final. “I’m looking at history,” he said today.