The most important event of 2015!!

[rubato]

...

[Lord Jim]

...

[Gob]

It's an expression of his profound ennui at reading a thread on a meaningless sport in another country. One for which he is to be congratulated for his restraint.

[Lord Jim]

I was thinking it was the most intelligent and thoughtful thing he's posted all day...

[Gob]

There is that too

[oldr_n_wsr]

Is Camaroon still in it?

[Gob]

Meade, we've got NZ vs SA live on TV today!

Come on the black caps!!!!

[MajGenl.Meade]

Damn. It's 10:3i at night here....

[Gob]

Saffers not looking too bright, lost both openers, now at 99/2 off 24 overs.

[MajGenl.Meade]

Well that's that then. 5-281 indeed! This has ceased to be a thread about the most important event of 2015 and can return to being some game thing of parochial interest to the auntie-podes.

[Guinevere]

This thing has gone on longer than an American presidential race.

[Lord Jim]

It's the sporting event equivalent of Rasputin...

It just won't die...

[MajGenl.Meade]

..and yet it's shorter than er... baseball season, basketball season, football season... hockey, lacrosse, curling... how odd!

[Lord Jim]

It's not shorter than their playoffs...(Which would be the true comparison)

Well, maybe on a par with hockey playoffs...

[Big RR]

And the NBA; I don't watch much pro basketball, but I think they have 4 best of 7 series (starting with 16 teams) through the finals. That's a lot of games (and qualifying teams).

[Gob]

A six off the penultimate ball to win the match, what a fucking nail biter!!!

The Black Caps dream lives on after they won what must rate as one of the most memorable of all World Cup games by four wickets.





Grant Elliott, perceived by some to be the weak link in the New Zealand batting, ended a wonderful, pulsating semi-final by hitting the penultimate ball of the match from the finest fast bowler on the planet high over wide long-on and into the heaving stands to send 40,000 people into raptures.

As the ball sailed over the boundary, Elliott raised his arms aloft. It was, said the South Africa captain, AB de Villiers, afterwards, scarcely holding back the tears, the shot of his life. Dale Steyn, who had been treated harshly in previous overs, sank to his haunches in utter despair. Yet again South Africa have fallen at a hurdle they found insurmountable. We said there was nothing between the sides but this was astonishing. Perhaps the magnificent crowd and the support of the entire nation made the crucial difference.

This superb match was rain-interrupted at a time that will have benefited the Kiwis, and was reduced to 43 overs a side, South Africa having made 281 for five. Under the Duckworth-Lewis method, New Zealand were required to make 298 to win or, technically, one fewer because a tie would have taken them through. Elliott ensured that was not necessary, and finished with 84 from 73 balls with seven fours and three sixes.

There was a wonderful contribution from Brendon McCullum, whose 59 from 26 balls kickstarted the run chase, and from Corey Anderson too, his 58 helping add a fifth-wicket partnership of 103 from 98 balls that resurrected the innings at a time when it seemed South Africa might take control. Earlier, Faf du Plessis had made 82, De Villiers an unbeaten 65 and David Miller a brutal 49 from only 18 balls to see South Africa to what appeared to be a formidable total.

New Zealand can now look forward to the trip across the Tasman Sea to Melbourne for the final on Sunday, the first time they will have left their country during this tournament. South Africa can return home with heads held high, though. This was no choke. De Villiers has a superb side who on the day were beaten by another of the same calibre.

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For a chase of this nature it needed leadership from the front and, almost inevitably, it came from McCullum, a man who is close to canonisation in this neck of the woods. He swashed and buckled, hitting Steyn out of the attack and helping add 71 for the first wicket inside seven overs. Suddenly the target looked in range.

In the end, two moments changed the course of the match. When he had 33, Anderson, stranded mid-pitch, should have been run out but De Villiers stumbled over the stumps and fumbled the chance. Then, in the penultimate over, Elliott skied Morne Morkel to deep square leg, where two fielders, the 12th man Farhaan Behardien and JP Duminy, converged and neither took the chance. These are the pressure situations that define games.

Having lost two wickets to Trent Boult and the new ball at the start of the match, South Africa rebuilt their innings superbly. De Villiers sent Rilee Rossouw in at No4 rather than himself, and together he and Du Plessis were able to add 83 before Rossouw was spectacularly caught by Martin Guptill at backward point, after McCullum, searching for something with which to break the stand, brought on Anderson, his fifth bowling change in as many overs at one end.

Now, though, De Villiers was freed from the necessity to mend the early damage, and with Du Plessis anchoring things, he began to play an expansive hand, the pair having added 102 for the fourth wicket by the time the rain began to fall in the middle of the second powerplay and the players were forced from the field. At that stage, although McCullum persisted with attacking, New Zealand had started to look a little rattled: half-chances had gone down, and a run-out missed, so that the break allowed them a chance to regroup, knowing that with De Villiers poised as he was on 60 already, a shortened match would surely suit them more than the opposition.

They could not have legislated for what followed as, for the remaining five overs, the South Africa captain was little more than a spectator as 65 runs were added of which he contributed five. It began when Du Plessis was caught behind off Anderson straight after the resumption, whereupon Miller set about the bowling with such thunderous strokes he had hit six fours and three sixes before he too edged to the keeper.

[Lord Jim]

Geezus...

All those gobbledygook numbers, but they don't even bother to mention the final score....

[Gob]

It's Aus vs NZ in the final. Luckily I'm not working that day too!!!

Australia's World Cup dream is alive and well, and with it a mouthwatering trans-Tasman final is in store for Sunday.



Michael Clarke's team fly to Melbourne on Friday one match away from lifting Australia's fifth title and fourth in the last five tournaments, the only object standing in their way their closest geographical rivals and co-hosts, New Zealand.


Brendon McCullum's unbeaten Black Caps side beat No.1-ranked Australia in a low-scoring thriller in the group stage, but are appearing in a first ever World Cup final at the MCG and in their first match outside New Zealand in this tournament.


"I think the fact that conditions are different will certainly help us and we've played a fair bit of cricket throughout the summer at the MCG as well," Clarke said of the final match-up. "Conditions are a lot different to what New Zealand have been playing in in New Zealand but we're going to have to play our best cricket.

"I think New Zealand will take confidence that they've beaten us in the tournament but I believe that (defeat at Eden Park) was the turning point in the tournament for the Australian team. I think that gave us a bit of a kick up the backside. We got a very good look at a team playing at the top of their game...and I think our attitude from that day has been exceptional."


Australia's passage to the final was secured with a 95-run win over India in Thursday night's second semi-final at the SCG, set up by a wonderful 105 from Steve Smith and finished off when Mitchell Johnson rose on the big stage to lead the Australian defence.

Any questions over whether Australia's total of 7-328 would be enough were answered, although the nerves did not subside until MS Dhoni's bizarre 65 was brought to an end. Dhoni mysteriously held back a final assault on the distant victory target – India were left six down, needing 121 from the last eight overs to win – and it was only then that he began to put the foot down, belting Shane Watson for two sixes in a row. However, the India captain was run out brilliantly by Glenn Maxwell soon after and in keeping with the tone of his odd innings, Dhoni did not appear to put much effort into making his ground.

"If you start too early in the game you get out for 150 maybe," said Dhoni, explaining his tactics in the run chase. "You have to take that risk. Maybe it was a bit too late but if my partnership with Ajinkya (Rahane) wouldn't have come at that time we would have cracked up for 140, 150,"

[Gob]

10 reasons why the Kiwis can’t win the World Cup (or why we just don't want them to win)

1. They haven't played a game in Australia yet during this World Cup, and our grounds are bigger than postage stamps.

2. It would be completely intolerable for them to hold the Rugby World Cup, the Bledisloe Cup, the Chappell-Hadlee Trophy and the Cricket World Cup.

3. Because they take the piss - we let them join our domestic competitions, and they end up stabbing us in the back by beating us. The Breakers just won their fourth NBL title, the Wellington Phoenix are currently top of the A-league, the Warriors have one of the biggest packs in the NRL, and the Super 15, well, the less said the better.

4. The whinging about the underarm. OK, so it wasn't in the spirit of the game, and made us look small-minded and terrified of losing. But it was 1981, was actually within the rules, and you were wearing beige so probably deserved it anyway. Enough already.

5. If they won the World Cup undefeated after dominating everyone else by playing great cricket, and beating us twice, the bragging would just be too much to bear.

6. On a properly paced pitch, with a proper size ground, where the dew doesn't settle halfway through the second innings, they will struggle to hit sixes or swing the ball.

7. Russell Crowe.

8. The 1984 Olympics - they won eight gold medals, we won precisely half that. They came up with the joke: "What do Australia and Carl Lewis have in common? Four gold medals."

9. Phar lap. It hurts to be reminded that he was not Australian. But really, who cares where he was born? He was famous for winning for Melbourne Cup, not the Timaru Classic.

10. They aren't Australian.

[MajGenl.Meade]