Best team won. Cannot say more. The hosts jinx is well and truly broken.
Probaly the least impressive OZ side to have clinched the title.
Just to put it further about this being not the best Aussie team ever, Faulkner was man of the match in the World Cup Final and the previous ones are
Clive Lloyd, Viv Richards, Mohinder Amarnath, David Boon, Wasim Akram, Aravinda De Silva, Shane Warne, Ricky Pointing, Adam Gilchrist, MS Dhoni…
All are certifiable greats. Is Faulkner one of them? Cannot really say he will do enough in future to be so.
So if the gong had gone to MJ Clarke you would have ranked the team higher?
Curious logic that.
Most of the previous WCs saw the worlds best Test players playing in limited overs format.
Now you are seeing the worlds best ODI players in their chosen specialty. Many of these are not Test greats, or even in the Test teams. Half the Aussies (Finch, Watson, Maxwell, Faukner, Starc and Hazelwood) won’t be in the next Test team.
The 2015 Aussies would have walloped the 1987 & 2007 winners. I’d back them against the 2003 mob and would crawl over broken glass to see them play the 1999 team.
There were more centuries scored this tournament (38) than in the first 5 tournaments combined.
There is talk that McCullum should be in the World ODI XI. Merits consideration.
His average innings length for the tournament was 19 balls. Where does that sit when evaluating certifiable greats?
Richards, Lloyd, Wasim Akram, De Silva, Warne et al were bad ODI players :dubious:. I think any team today would sacrifice all their first borns to have them.
As for the match ups
- They might win against them. Maybe. OTH the 1987 team had people like Border, Boon, Steve Waugh, Dean Jones, Craig McDormott and Simon O’Donell. So interesting match.
1999: No fucking way are this crowd winning. The Waughs. Gilchrist, Warne. McGrath. Ponting.
2003: Phuleese. Remove Warne and the Waugh and add Symonds, Hayden. Never mind Martyn, Lehman and Bichel.
2007: Weaker than the 2003 crowd, but still with th core of ty 2003 team, plus Mike Hussey.
Clarkes men are worthy winners, but not the best Australia have ever put forward. This is as much a show of the quality and dept of Aussie cricket then anything else.
I think Starc in this WC has been better than any Australian fast bowler including Mcgrath ever was. Steve Smith will emerge as an ODI ATG (all time great) if not an ATG in all forms.
This aust. team has got many impact players. Explosive batting and deep batting. They lack in spin department though.
Final analysis (honest!)
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Need to keep Associates, 14 is a good number, ensures that they get a fair stick at it. Upsets are possible and even then NRR rules mean that Test Teams have to win big against Associates.
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Game is too batsmen friendly. Both Kiwis and RSA have shown the diwnside, bullies against poor bowling, fall to pieces against good bowling, (Ok less so for Kiwis). End the two balls rule, bring back the extra fielder.
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Some good young bowlers coming through, batsmen will not have their own way, unless the ICC does something stupid and changes the rules again,
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Test Status for Ireland.
Aussies out muscled us; they deserved to win. Still, well done to McCullum and his men for all they’ve achieved in the past few weeks. A slightly limp finish to a massive tournament, but I think we just had no more tricks or escapes left, and were beaten by a stronger side. All round, though, a wonderful tournament, and I think there’s a whole new generation of fans this side of the Ditch.
**AK84 **I think your selling this Australian side well short. They beat every potential rival (bar South Africa) solidly and were only one wicket away from winning at Eden Park. Yesterday’s bowling was an incredible display. I doubt any team could have coped much better with that opening spell (plenty of teams could have avoided the miserable collapse at the end though). They were only bowled out once in the tournament so the batting’s pretty good as well. The fielding was exceptional.
As they’re also reasonably young, I fear another decade of Australian domination is about to descend on the cricketing world.
I agree with all of your final analysis though, the only addition I’d add is two matches every day for the group stage to get that done more quickly.
Just came in to say I sorely missed being able to post about a few games, but what fun they were to watch and to read about in this thread. The final last night… hats off to both finalists who found their way there by being the two best sides of the tournament! Good on the aussies and the kiwi’s, and a second congratulations to Clarke and his boys! This cup has been fun and good times. Loved seeing the associates breathe some fire into the ODI world, who delivered some truly entertaining cricket and who I hope can greatly expand the game. It is now a time of renewal for several of the big teams, notably England and India - (the finalists both have boots to hang up as well) and it will be interesting to see how they all plow ahead, especially in light of the increased quality of the world game.
Don’t know how many of my fellow tragics follow Cricinfo but can recommend highly the article by Jarrod Kimber “New Zealand’s greatest almost”.
Folds history and contemporary context and emotions including the Jo’burg 1953 Test into a magnificent narrative.
Almost brought tears to my hard-bitten eyes, which is all the more embarrassing as I’m at work.
I’m spending my lunch hour reading Kimber’s articles on the world cup - some damn fine writing there.
So… you’re saying that good bowling will still produce results? Seems like the system works then!
My thoughts on this are earlier in the thread. Basically, they need to have a first class system in place before they even get considered for this.
The game has been batsman friendly for years- I’m not sure how ending the two balls rule will end this. Decent spinners are a rare commodity and bowl well with any ball.
You’ll always have flat track bullies. Shortened boundaries, limits on bouncers etc also contribute.
This side would have murdered winners in the 80s’s and 90’s. Mohinder Amarnath and David Boon wouldn’t get a game in ODI’s these days.
Mark Taylor opened in the 1996 final in a side where Warne batted at 5 ahead of Stuart Law. The team also included Reiffel and Fleming.
The 1987 Cup winners had Boon and Marsh as openers. McDermott batted at 4, Veletta at 6. Dyer and May were other so so members of that side.
I’m not sure if you arguing against me or supporting my theory 
My point is there has been such a vast change in the game that the earlier players would not gain a spot in a side of today (batsmen). That is not to say they wouldn’t have adapted and become far more adept with the new rules and conditions.
I could see earlier players who never had a chance at the game- say Keith Miller or Norm O’Neill- would have (IMHO) been real standouts.
Certainly agreeing. Imagine opening with the likes of Taylor, Boon and Marsh nowadays.
I am an old fart but one of the things that most amuses me about my contemporaries are the rose coloured glasses they wear when looking at sports figures of the past. In nearly every sport I follow I don’t think most of the legends of the past would handle today’s young hotshots. When I finished school a friend and I contemplated getting in some serious training and trialling for spots in a Sydney rugby league team. I would happily concede that I would have needed some lucky breaks but maybe I could have made it. Nowadays such a thought would be laughable. Even junior games are terrifyingly physical.
It’s the same with modern big hitters in cricket, they bat as though they have no stumps to protect. Because they hardly ever fail to make contact they just move up and down the pitch and across the crease at will. You can bowl what would be a yorker outside off but end up a low full toss on the pads. And sails over the onside boundary.
I’ll let Sangakara speak for me
So, little spin, ball remains hard throughout, hardly any reverse, I don’t think its arguable that the quality of bowlers has reduced and batting has never been easier.
[QUOTE=Cicero]
This side would have murdered winners in the 80s’s and 90’s. Mohinder Amarnath and David Boon wouldn’t get a game in ODI’s these days.
[/QUOTE]
You kidding? Amarnath was the prototype bits and pieces all rounder. They would have loved a player like him. As for David Boon, the guy faced down the 1980’s Windies attack, reverse swing from Messr Imran and company, Botham, Hadless etc. He would have butchered todays bowling.
This, here, is dead on. The fact is, that with very few exceptions, almost everyone who made a living in sport in years gone by would struggle to get a game nowadays, purely due to better nutrition and training programmes meaning modern players are bigger, faster and more powerful. Sports that rely on physical contact in particular are susceptible to this. Rugby Union being my sport, anyone who tells me Gareth Edwards (for example) is the greatest scrum half who ever lived, doesn’t appreciate that he would have been smashed, repeatedly, in the modern game and all those breaks he made would have been cut down on the gain line now. If anything, the pace of change is rendering players from 10 years ago obsolete in “best ever” conversations - Martin Johnson was big, hard and a good leader, but as a pure player Lawes and Launchbury are both probably bigger, faster and better ball players than he ever was (now they need to put the brain on their game though). I see this all over world rugby - somebody like Brodie Retallick would hammer Norm Maxwell (who I thought was a bloody good player at a relatively down time for All Black rugby).
That said, I think cricket may be a partial exception (but principally Test cricket - though for how long this lasts, who knows, given techniques from limited overs cricket are, and will continue, to make inroads into that form of the game). Hostile fast bowlers bowl at basically the same speeds that people like Thomson, Lillee, Marshall and Holding were bowling at. The guile required to bowl decent spin doesn’t seem to have changed much, no matter how many new mystery deliveries are produced. Perversely, the people who have it worst from the standpoint of developments in players are probably batsmen - who might be fitter to concentrate for longer but are faced with fielders who don’t just watch the ball go past them (Bradman would have got nowhere near 100 average in the modern day, in my opinion, simply due to this). It could be argued that the removal of uncovered pitches and better bats are an aid in offsetting this - it’s not an argument I’d be prepared to make myself but I could see the logic behind it.
Was disappointed with the final, given I was barracking for NZ but fair play to Australia, the bowling performance was excellent throughout the tournament and turned up again yesterday. We’ve got NZ and Australia both this coming summer and I have a feeling England are going to get a pasting, particularly if this is any indication of the Test side. Don’t see how they can leave Starc, for one, out of the Test attack.
Good tournament overall I thought - though the 2011 tournament would run it close quality wise, I think (mental Ind-Pak semi final, England somehow tying with India after chasing 350+, England in general being in 5 nail-biters in a row - what ever happened to them?)
I think you are basing your case on two batsmen who have exactly the kinds of figures that would ensure they never played ODI cricket in the modern era. Both were dull, gritty slow scorers who would have needed all of 50 overs to ever get a hundred.
Devout Aussie fan though I am, Iwas happy for Boon to get runs but I often didn’t bother watching it happen.
There are things which the modern players does a lot better than the oldies. Fielding is one, Running between the wickets is another. However, it is difficult to compare across era because the game changes so perversely over the decades. I love Steve Smith. But how would he have done if faced with the Windies attack of the 1975/1979 WC in contemporary conditions? Holding, Garner, Roberts, Marshall, Colin Croft? No fielding restrictions or limits to bouncers, rudimentary helmets? Would Wasim “Bowl a No ball every third delivery” Akram been as effective in the Free Hit era, with two white balls?
With that you can only guess by looking at the differences between the era and how one player would adjust. Your Bradman example is good. The previous generation had to face quicks as a matter of routine. These days you see a bunch of jumped up medium pacers with few exceptions. Only Johnson, Starch, Steyn and (lately) Wahab Riaz could be construed as fast by those standards. These days somebody balls at 90mph, he is suddenly considered express. Back in the 1990’s and early 2000’s, people like McGrath could ball at 90 often and no one would think of McGrath as a super quick.
I disagree. This was like the 2007 tournament, utterly predictable with an Aussie romp home. The 2011 version had only one thing wrong with it; India winning.;), otherwise when you got to the QF, 7/8 sides could easily have won it… This time?. Just a couple of close matches and upsets, Pakistan-RSA, the first Aus-NZ match and in the KO stages, each and every match being won by the favourites and only two being even close.