Another Tin Medal
Why should we be so surprised? As a nation, we're quite good at filling third and fourth places - must be our destiny (SPARC take note). When the TV pictures first came on, yet another lesson that in cricket, until you see the state of the pitch you can't really assess the chances of each team.
It makes me wonder - for the group matches in Jamaica, grass was left on the pitch and was quite pacy and bouncy, yet for the semi-final it was brown and completely devoid of grass. With India and Pakistan failing, Sri Lanka is the only hope for the subcontinent-dominated ICC to save face. Am I suggesting the groundsman was given the order to serve up a spinfest? You betcha I am. Will be interesting to see the appearance of Kensington Oval on Saturday.
To be fair, Sri Lanka deserve to be in the final and good luck to them - they haven't played Oz for a while, so while on the odd occasion they've taken Murali to the cleaners (0-99 in Sydney sticks in the memory), it will be a great contest between the best bowling attack (SL) and the best batting lineup (Oz).
Of course I am assuming Oz will win their semi-final against SAF. While I think SAF have a chance as St Lucia is usually a batting paradise (as was St Kitts for their group match) you have to be brave to suggest a SAF upset. But don't write them off completely - for some reason Australia are at their most vulnerable when games turn out to be batting slogfests (too many instances of teams - mainly SAF and NZ - scoring over 300 batting second against them).
Will be interesting to see how the public react to the loss - is losing semifinalists an acceptable performance? And of course if the world was completely lacking in double standards SPARC will brand them as failures and our Sports Minister will question their mental toughness.
It makes me wonder - for the group matches in Jamaica, grass was left on the pitch and was quite pacy and bouncy, yet for the semi-final it was brown and completely devoid of grass. With India and Pakistan failing, Sri Lanka is the only hope for the subcontinent-dominated ICC to save face. Am I suggesting the groundsman was given the order to serve up a spinfest? You betcha I am. Will be interesting to see the appearance of Kensington Oval on Saturday.
To be fair, Sri Lanka deserve to be in the final and good luck to them - they haven't played Oz for a while, so while on the odd occasion they've taken Murali to the cleaners (0-99 in Sydney sticks in the memory), it will be a great contest between the best bowling attack (SL) and the best batting lineup (Oz).
Of course I am assuming Oz will win their semi-final against SAF. While I think SAF have a chance as St Lucia is usually a batting paradise (as was St Kitts for their group match) you have to be brave to suggest a SAF upset. But don't write them off completely - for some reason Australia are at their most vulnerable when games turn out to be batting slogfests (too many instances of teams - mainly SAF and NZ - scoring over 300 batting second against them).
Will be interesting to see how the public react to the loss - is losing semifinalists an acceptable performance? And of course if the world was completely lacking in double standards SPARC will brand them as failures and our Sports Minister will question their mental toughness.
Labels: post mortems
posted by Rob Crawford at 10:49 AM
1 Comments:
Double Standards?
Didn't the NZ basketball team win the Halberg award for coming 4th at the world champs?
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