Wonderful post Daniel. We often hear commentators talk about "the colour" etc of World Cup events and it can sometimes seem like a bit of glib promotion for the sake of "selling" it but it is great to read the thoughts of someone who has actually experienced it.
Michael Clarke has announced that he will retire from ODI cricket after tomorrow's World Cup Final, a fitting way to go if ever there was one.
He will finish with 245 matches, an average in the mid-40's (currently 44.42), nearly or even past 8,000 runs (currently 7907) and a strike-rate of almost 79 (currently 78.81).
When coupled with his useful bowling, brilliant fielding and captaincy, he has been a great ODI player. Well played, Pup!
A brisk morning here in Melbourne but clear blue sky's,no duckworth-Lewis today,hoping for a great match with the kiwis coming out on top,on my way into the city in a couple of hours
Go Kiwis!!!
For me it comes back to the bounce and pace of the MCG and its longer boundaries. I have a suspicion that Johnson might be given the licence to bomb the New Zealand top order while Starc and Hazlewood do their thing. To that end, I slightly favour Australia - if the top four batsmen can get through Southee and Boult.
I am really looking forward to the battles within the battle - Starc vs McCullum, Boult vs Warner, Southee vs Finch.....
Australia has (I think) the best all-round line-up and I think that a major difference could come in the composition of the 20 overs that need to be bowled after the front-liners. Starc, Hazlewood and Johnson are cancelled out by Boult, Southee and Vettori........Faulkner, Maxwell and Watson vs Anderson, Henry and Williamson might be a different story.
Aussies in box seat needing just 54 runs to win with heaps of balls to spare, only 2 wickets down with Clarke and Smith looing very good. Would be great to see Pup still in when the final runs are scored, or even better if he scored the runs.
Well played the Aussies,you played pretty much flawless cricket and deserved the win
With all that said I think the turning point of the game was the catch taken by Haddin in the first over of the power play to dismiss Taylor,he got a long way across for a old fella.
The Aussie bowlers deserve praise,namely Starc you coped plenty of flak at the start of the summer,but is now #1 odi bowler,anyway great effort from the kiwis who deserve heaps of praise for the way they played the game,sad to see the end of the summer and even sadder to see the W.i. Playing on Boxing Day instead of the kiwis,it's a long time since N.Z played some tests here and think they deserve a Boxing Day test instead of that rabble W.i
There has been some good comments made during the summer so don't stop now we have tour of W.I and then that other rabble team England for the ashes
Lads this cricketing talk has been wonderful to see, lets keep this thread or another going for the WI tour and Ashes? It's great to get a bit of chat going on this side of the forum as it been a bit too quiet over the past few years.
I think a lack of a decent collectable cricket card release really hurts the cricket section of the forum. We really could have done with a World Cup cricket release, something similar to the 1996 Futera release. Being a home World Cup there was plenty of interest, a good quality release would have been fantastic.