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Final - New Zealand v Australia (29th March)

Who will win this match?

  • Total voters
    65
  • Poll closed .
FaaipDeOiad

FaaipDeOiad

Hall of Fame Member
Prince EWS said:
A great sign of how much I've enjoyed this World Cup is the fact that I'm sad that it's ending now. Rather than being too long, I've not grown tired of it yet at all.

Value is subjective and all so if others have enjoyed 2011 or 2007 more then there's nothing wrong with that, but to say that only a couple of the matches here have been close/entertaining/memorable is just flat out wrong.
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Agree with this. I remember early in the tournament when people were roundly praising the quality of the cricket too. I think it's been diminished a bit in the minds of many because the end result was fairly predictable, I think most people at the start of the tournament would have picked Australia, NZ, SA and India to make the semis and Australia winning is no shock, plus the final wasn't exactly a thriller, but it's still been an above average tournament in my view.

Things I'd note that make the tournament stand out a bit in my mind are the overall quality of the associate performances, which are way higher than in previous tournaments. The worst associates were quite impressive and competitive and I'll remember Afghanistan etc pretty fondly from this tournament, whereas in most WCs there's basically one non test team that is competitive and everyone else is horribly outclassed. Also some nice variation between the games, had some very high scoring matches but ultimately the teams with the best pace attacks made the final and bowling really decided the final.

Plenty of downsides too like a relative lack of really close knockout games, and a ****ty format, but I've enjoyed it and I think the signs are quite good for future WCs if we can get a better format with two group stages or something so the associates can have a chance to land upsets but we have have a higher number of competitive games between big teams where the result actually impacts the tournament. Probably the biggest criticism I'd make of this WC is that a lot of the good games I can remember watching ultimately didn't matter at all, it's just 60 games that don't matter too much and then 7 that decide the whole tournament. That isn't an issue unique to 2011 though.
 
Burgey

Burgey

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Massive paddling. Well done NZ on a great tourney, but let's be honest, the World Cup is always Australia's. We just loan it out to someone else occasionally.
 
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