2015 Cricket World Cup Discussion Thread

[AFEV]

Not really, India was beaten convincingly every time they played us (meaning the away factor meant something), they had months of playing here before anyone else showed up which would definitely have contributed to their knowledge of the conditions coming in I think.
India would have to be the least convincing team to ever go undefeated in the group stages.

SA, NZ and Australia are more or less all equal in the one day game in my opinion, with results being decided by HGA or variations in performances from day to day.

[The_Captain]

Not really, India was beaten convincingly every time they played us (meaning the away factor meant something), they had months of playing here before anyone else showed up which would definitely have contributed to their knowledge of the conditions coming in I think.
India would have to be the least convincing team to ever go undefeated in the group stages.

SA, NZ and Australia are more or less all equal in the one day game in my opinion, with results being decided by HGA or variations in performances from day to day.

Bahahaha mate... You have no idea then!

[JBs-Hawks]

Soooo.

Brad Haddin is a witch!

[AFEV]

Haha, fair call then. I myself don't watch as much cricket as I wish I did. I mostly watch Australia and South Africa and don't have the time for anything else or keepign track of domestic cricket whatsoever.
Still reckon India is an extremely ordinary cricket team at the moment, relative to the top sides.

Can't believe Haddin was giving send-offs because he was uncomfortable with how nice NZ were when we visited..

[GCSkiwi]

You deserved your spot in the final, but your effort in the final was undeserving....if that makes sense?

The thing is our match in Eden Park was an absolute down to the wire game. So that's us in a foreign country against a vocal crowd. You had the same thing against us yesterday and really did crumble under the pressure. Several of your dismissals were because of indecision and silly shots. Starc did bowl an absolute beauty to McCullum but McCullum didn't do himself many favours by charging down the pitch.

Send offs are send offs, I don't think there's a major issue with that, it does show a bit about the person though. It's the nature of competitive sport to let go a little and only the most humble of sportspeople can hold that back.

No arguments from me I was very, very disappointed with our showing. McCullum was predictable and didn't change his strategy when he should have, Starc completely outdid him, and in general yep we collapsed. I think it was a bad performance from us and we could and should have done a lot better. I would like to think that people can recognise that was a bad game from us, not what you'd usually expect, as was the case when you came to us. I'm happy to admit that both our teams playing their average game, Aus would win more often than not, but I think the gap between our teams has closed up a lot in recent times.

NZ were easily the 3rd best team.

Aus and SA are close the gap back to NZ is fairly bigger, the gap to India is also fairly big and then the gap to the rest is even bigger.

I think to be honest within the tournament I would put Aus at the top, a gap back to SA with NZ on their heels and India not too far behind, and then daylight pretty much from there. Maybe I'm over-rating us because I really like the majority of the team we have now, I think we had a couple of key figures who didn't perform too well like Taylor or were patchy like Guptil and Williamson, but I think that's typical of any team - Amla, Philander and Steyn for SA were below par, it's swings and roundabouts. I think the strength Aus has is consistency and redundancy, you rarely see collapses from you guys. But I don't think there's a massive gap between us and SA or India.

NZ away from home are no where near as good. India played all tournament away from home and showed a fair bit.

I stand by what i said. Aus> SA>India>Nz>Sri Lanka>Pakistan> West Indies... And I'll leave it at that.

Rankings all a matter of how you see it so that's fair enough. As for playing away from home, I find that a weird argument the same as all the talk about the size of the MCG etc... Teams always tend to be better at home for a number of reasons. But it's not like we've never played in other countries, not like we've never played at the MCG and not like we've never won an away game. We played the entire tournament apart from the final at home, you played the entire tournament apart from our pool game at home, and we both won our home games. Yours just happened to matter a bit more to the lifting of the cup :P

Can't believe Haddin was giving send-offs because he was uncomfortable with how nice NZ were when we visited..

God the media here are getting all bent out of shape over that too, if you listen to the clip he's pretty wasted and taking the piss.  I just think the idea of send offs is unnecessary, whats the motivation for it? Sledging while someone is in, fair play, because you're trying to put someone off their game and make them play badly. Some people disagree with it, personally I have no problem with it. It's when you've got someone out, at that point what reason do you have to keep giving them shower? Especially if someone has played well, that's the point that for me it crosses into being disrespectful. Not just cricket but in any sport, once the game is done, you don't need to run over and remind someone that you beat them, you don't get anything out of it.

[JBs-Hawks]

Haddin having a chardonnay in the change rooms is bigger controversy then a few send offs surely!