Voters get it right

So most of the voters in our poll for the VB Series final got it right. I wonder how skewed the numbers would have been if we'd put up the poll before the first game. I suspect something like 80-20?

Anyway, the news is that Australia have won the VB Series yet again, winning the best-of-three finals 2-1 after yet another thrashing of Sri Lanka. Gilchrist scored a 67-ball century to help chase down a fairly iffy target of 267. It is now the fastest one-day hundred by an Australian batsman, the previous record being held, coincidentally, by another bloke called Adam Gilchrist. Thankfully for Sri Lanka, Murali had no intentions of outdoing his own record, set in game two.

Of course, having reached 200/3 in 40 overs, Sri Lanka had no business getting only 266. They should have scored 290. Then again, that may have not been enough! This is the first time in eight years that the final leg went to three games.

I remember the 1991/2 edition where India were on the verge of taking the finals to three games. We lost a bloody close second game, perhaps as a precursor of what was to happen in the 1992 World Cup! I distinctly remember Steve Waugh fluffing an extremely simple return catch off Tendulkar. But in a sense, India was in the final more or less by default. West Indies were really horrible!

Rick Eyre wonders what the fuss was all about and whether things had actually changed across half a decade.