Australia Win the World Cup
In pure darkness, in a bit of a farce, Australia deservedly lifted the World Cup last night thanks to a magnificent innings from Adam Gilchrist. The best team of the World Cup won, although not quite in the way that cricket lovers around the world would have hoped.
The day started badly with a bit of dodgy weather around meaning the start of the game was delayed and delayed, and when they got round to agreeing a start time the game was to be 38 overs each. Not perfect when this is the final of the premier one day competition, but at least both sides knew the score from the beginning. Adam Gilchrist hasn’t had the best of tournaments (by his standards), but he set upon Vaas early on and was delight to watch. His eventual score of 149 had really set up the Australian total, and it was always going to be tough for Sri Lanka from there.
Sangakarra and Jayasuriya started slowly, but once they felt the pace of the pitch they started to release themselves, and a real contest looked like it was on. Just what the World Cup wanted in a final! But a couple of wickets from Aus, then a bit of rain lost any momentum that the Sri Lankans had. Then we had the start of the farcical events.. Sri Lanka came back onto the field after a rain break, and they may have known, but no-one else knew what total they were now chasing after losing a couple of overs! By this point it was close to all over anyway, and then a couple more wickets meant it was a matter of time before the game was over.
Cue the really farcical events.. The light was offered to the batsmen, who accepted it with three overs left and knowing they had no chance of winning. The Aussies celebrated, the Sri Lankan’s had accepted it was over, but the umpires read the rules their way and said they would all have to come back the next day for the final three overs! They wouldn’t though, as the duckworth lewis method would have been enforced, but the umpires were having none of it. So we had three overs of Australia bowling spin, and Sri Lanka just standing there in the dark hitting the ball back to the bowler. Completely farcical, and I’m sure there will be some ramifications.
However, for me it doesn’t take away from Australia’s achievement of winning another World Cup, and in completely dominant fashion. They beat all comers, look strong in every department and I find it hard to believe we beat them in the CB series earlier in the year! They had Hayden to thank for scoring a shed load of runs, Gilly for the MOM performance in the final, Tait coming to the party and bowling well, and of course to the leading wicket taker in the cup, Glenn McGrath. He now retires from cricket, and as one of the very best bowlers there has ever been.
I’ll take a couple of days to reflect on the cup before I pick my best XI, as there’s been a lot of good performances over the long long period of the cup! And for now, time to move onto domestic cricket and the English summer of test cricket as well!
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