David Barry has another excellent followup statistics post. The original was on batting strategies in the first innings of one day internationals:

To take an extreme example, suppose you're a really bad team like Bangladesh, up against a team like Australia. Whenever Bangladesh bats first, they choose the run-maximising strategy. The results might be a bell curve centred around 180. So a lot of scores around 170-190, a few past 200, a few below 160, etc.

Now Australia has no problem chasing any of those. Australia's only going to have problems when the target's up over 250. So while the Bangladeshi averages will be best-served by going with the run-maximising strategy, they may end up losing every game.

On the other hand, if they play more aggressively, then sometimes their batsmen will have a bit of luck and they'll end up with a big score. In their long series of matches with Australia, they'll have loads of heavy defeats, after making scores like 120 and 150 and so on, but every now and then, they'll make 250 and have a chance at winning. So their averages will suffer, but their win/loss ratio will improve.

Nesta replied with a comment on what exactly the Australian strategy is:

If none or one wicket is down at 15 you will see them up the tempo markedly until one of the batters falls.

The same applies throughout the innings. When each partnership begins they set the clock back to zero and try to increase the run rate in four or five over blocks until they are at the their limit.

Around the 40 over mark they set a final target and usually one that seems just out reach especially if 6 or more wickets are in hand.

And, finally, David Barry gives the facts and figures of Australia's relative dominance over batting first:

In day games, Australia has won 73% of matches when batting first (ignoring no-results). Second is Sri Lanka at 49% — a whopping 24 percentage points! Australia has won 78% of matches batting second, with South Africa second at 71% — only seven percentage points behind.

In day-night games, batting first: Aus 76%, South Africa 63%; batting second: Aus 62%, South Africa and Pakistan 55%. Once again, a bigger difference in batting first results.

So it does look like Australia have an advantage over their rivals when it comes to batting first, above and beyond their general cricket superiority.