My secret hope that we might lift the World Cup has been extinguished. It isn't that we lost. Good teams can drop a game here or there. It isn't even the extent of the loss. We were after all missing two vital players and it was a dead game. New Zealand has no chance of winning the World Cup because Australia has no chance of losing it.
Australia have ploughed their way through this tournament without revealing a single weakness. I cannot see how they could possibly lose their last two games, except by extreme bad luck – and Ricky Ponting's luck is exceptionally good. They deserve to win the Cup. Any other result would frankly be the biggest upset of the tournament, bar none.
I still feel we are even money to make the finals however. We've played some incredible cricket so far. We bounced back after the Super 8 game against Sri Lanka and there's no reason we can't bounce back again. And if we make the finals, we'll give the Aussies more of a run for their money.
Saturday, 21 April 2007
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Yep, it looks like we're back to the familiar 'Aussies look unbeatable' scene again. It takes some doing to consistently rake up 300 plus scores when most needed - and this wasn't even the case in 1992 when they dominated the ocmpetition.
I don't think New Zealand bowled badly, but they were shockingly indisciplined for such a high profile clash. Having said that, I still couldn't understand the need to replace Jacob Oram with an extra bowler - I mean Fleming would have known that the spinners and Styris would bowl thirty overs between them, and should have really left the remaining overs to 2 frontliners and McMillan.
Bringing in an extra batsman (even if it was the much maligned Hamish Marshall)wouldn't have done much to weaken the bowling effort and w ould have at least lengthened the batting order. When you have James Franklin (a decent batter, but not a recognised one) coming in at number six, you know you've got trouble ahead.
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