***Official*** Australia v New Zealand - Final

[Smudge]

Browsing it now too. Fiery acting as toolish as ever, which is no surprise, but some of the rubbish from Julian is just as bad. Still, Fiery got everything that was coming to him.

 

[zaremba]

Congrats Australia.

 

[Briony]

Poor showing from the kiwis. Well done Aussies and Punter for player of the tournament and winning the golden bat. Well done Watson for MOTM.

Australia is still too good for the rest of the world.

 

[honestbharani]

Poor showing from the kiwis. Well done Aussies and Punter for player of the tournament and winning the golden bat. Well done Watson for MOTM.

Australia is still too good for the rest of the world.

Gotta agree.. They seem to slip up now and then but no one plays these knock out games better than these guys.. Gotta hand to Australia.. Always step up in the big finals and semis games.. Awesome and thoroughly deserved defence of the title.. Punter showing that he is one of the best, if not the best, knock out match players ever...

 

[Xuhaib]

Gotta agree.. They seem to slip up now and then but no one plays these knock out games better than these guys.. Gotta hand to Australia.. Always step up in the big finals and semis games.. Awesome and thoroughly deserved defence of the title.. Punter showing that he is one of the best, if not the best, knock out match players ever...

we may argue all day long that he is not in Sachin and Lara's league but he does own both of them in terms of important odi knocks.

 

[Briony]

we may argue all day long that he is not in Sachin and Lara's league but he does own both of them in terms of important odi knocks.

Lara and Punter are both matchwinners. The former more for playing in a rubbish team and the latter is just an outright gun in matches which count. He was clearly the batsman of the tournament again and no other batsman in contemporary cricket can get near him as a big match player.

 

[Amobokobokoboko]

****y game, NZ had some goodplaying batsmen, but the OZ bowlers really went hard on them.

OZ won the game and deserved to play.

Pity the guys I wanted to see preform didn't manage to do so; Ponting , McCullum.

 

[honestbharani]

we may argue all day long that he is not in Sachin and Lara's league but he does own both of them in terms of important odi knocks.

I actually agree... Sachin doing his best to sort of reducing that hole in his record now, but for sheer consistency in doing that, you have to pick Punter..

 

[Furball]

Watto now averaging over 40 with the bat and under 30 with the ball in ODIs. WAFG.

Averaging close to 50 as an opener, good strike rate, good conversion rate when he passes 50, if he can keep that up then along with his bowling, he could go down as an ODI great.

 

[cover drive man]

Well done Australia, bit late I know, but still.

 

[AaronK]

Poor showing from the kiwis. Well done Aussies and Punter for player of the tournament and winning the golden bat. Well done Watson for MOTM.

Australia is still too good for the rest of the world.

ya and just the thought of it makes me want to quit watching cricket.. sports are fun when they are competative..Aus dominance is geting soo boring and dire.. I am not saying this to show that i don't like Aus cricket.. i really like the aussie team.. but what i hate is other teams' unabilities to match the strength of Aussie team..and put a competative match against them..last year South Africa was the only team that challanged them in their own home.. but they were able to fight back and eventually they beat South Africa in South Africa..

this years Ashes were just a fluke.. Aus was dominating the whole series before the last test match.. infact, they had one bad day.. and that cost them the series..the point is.. the other teams still have to work hard to get to Aus level.. until then.. seeing Aus dominating them series after series is just boring..

 

[The Sean]

ya and just the thought of it makes me want to quit watching cricket.. sports are fun when they are competative..Aus dominance is geting soo boring and dire.. I am not saying this to show that i don't like Aus cricket.. i really like the aussie team.. but what i hate is other teams' unabilities to match the strength of Aussie team..and put a competative match against them..last year South Africa was the only team that challanged them in their own home.. but they were able to fight back and eventually they beat South Africa in South Africa..

this years Ashes were just a fluke.. Aus was dominating the whole series before the last test match.. infact, they had one bad day.. and that cost them the series..the point is.. the other teams still have to work hard to get to Aus level.. until then.. seeing Aus dominating them series after series is just boring..

You know Australia have lost three of their last five Test series don't you?

 

[Uppercut]

ya and just the thought of it makes me want to quit watching cricket..

Don't let the door hit your arse on the way out eh.

 

[pasag]

People realise Ponting was out for 1 in the final right

Lol at Aus dominance comment as well. Someone hasn't watched much cricket over the past year.

 

[Athlai]

Last CH was 2-2 wasn't it? And we looked on top because of Guptill's efforts in the rained off match. Full strength NZ or even just with Vettori may have seen a bit of a difference in how this match went about.

 

[stephen]

ya and just the thought of it makes me want to quit watching cricket.. sports are fun when they are competative..Aus dominance is geting soo boring and dire.. I am not saying this to show that i don't like Aus cricket.. i really like the aussie team.. but what i hate is other teams' unabilities to match the strength of Aussie team..and put a competative match against them..last year South Africa was the only team that challanged them in their own home.. but they were able to fight back and eventually they beat South Africa in South Africa..

this years Ashes were just a fluke.. Aus was dominating the whole series before the last test match.. infact, they had one bad day.. and that cost them the series..the point is.. the other teams still have to work hard to get to Aus level.. until then.. seeing Aus dominating them series after series is just boring..

Aus did NOT dominate the most recent ashes series. Before the final game both sides had won one game each (convincingly) and had the better of a draw each. Hard to say anything other than the series was for all intents and purposes even going into the final game. Sure the Aussie players had been statistically better, but most of that was due to the absolute direness of England in game 1.

 

[Spinksy]

Well done Australia. Champions and rightfully so.

 

[Uppercut]

Last CH was 2-2 wasn't it? And we looked on top because of Guptill's efforts in the rained off match. Full strength NZ or even just with Vettori may have seen a bit of a difference in how this match went about.

From the side that won those two matches, Vettori was the only player unavailable for the final through injury. Until he pulled up on the morning of the final, I thought you guys were just making pre-emptive excuses .

It is tough with Vettori down though.

 

[Briony]

From the side that won those two matches, Vettori was the only player unavailable for the final through injury. Until he pulled up on the morning of the final, I thought you guys were just making pre-emptive excuses .

It is tough with Vettori down though.

The difference between oz and NZ though is that the latter might be competitive at times in the CH series but fail to win finals in the biggest tournaments.

 

[pup11]

I was down with a viral for the last few days so wasn't able to post during the final, but I'm chuffed with the way we performed in this global tournament despite having a very young team at our disposal.

Extremely happy about Punter as well, after all the flak he has received in the last few months, this tournament win was probably the best thing that could have happened to him as well as the rebuilding Aussie side, it was awesome to see the way in which Ponting lead his young bunch of blokes by example.

My heart goes out to all the Kiwi fans, it would have been pretty disappointing to see your team go down in the finals, but I think the New Zealand team and their fans should be proud that they managed to make it that far, despite losing one player after the other.