Ben on...the captains on...that big thumping

In the press conference after the Super 8 game between Australia and New Zealand, Ricky Ponting had a good gloat:

If they don't think that's going to affect them at all then how is any psychological edge ever gained in a game of cricket? If we don't take something out of today's game then nobody ever can.

We've just beaten New Zealand by 215 runs in a world cup game so they've got a lot of thinking to do.

What a pig. Still, after a win like that you have the right to say whatever you like.

Stephen Fleming was philosophical:

We talked the talk and really wanted to win this game. But there's no doubt we've had one eye on the semifinal.

There was nothing riding on the match and if it took an edge off us we were always going to be in trouble and I guess that's what happened today. You've got to be playing above yourselves to beat Australia and we were certainly well below that today.

And this is probably a fair assessment of the game. It would have been great if we could have won it, but the fact that less was riding on the match made it that little bit harder to gain motivation.

He also tried to turn things around and sound confident, but it was a pretty sorry sort of bravado:

We are a dangerous side, we can play like we did today or we can play a semifinal and chase down 350. We are even more dangerous now that we've got two games to win the world cup.

Australia are playing great cricket and I wonder ... 'Are they going to have a bad day?' We hope to get past Sri Lanka and then create a bad day for them in the final.

Hoping that we get to the final and Australia trip up is about the best we can do.