Australia are Big Daddies (another gratuitous cricket post)

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So Australia won the big match Saturday against Sri Lanka, 281 runs to 215.

I mention this mainly because it provides another opportunity to share with you the the florid and often incomprehensible brilliance that is cricket journalism. Here’s the especially florid and brilliant Rahul Bhattacharya summing things up at Cricinfo.com:

The final day of the ninth World Cup was an absurd and boisterous one which began with rain, ended in darkness, and in between contained an innings of lashing power and glory the likes of which observers felt a World Cup final had not seen before. This is already a tall claim to make. Clive Lloyd hit a superb captain’s hundred in 1975. Viv Richards held stage four years later. Aravinda de Silva’s century in 1996 was a masterpiece in pacing a chase. By the end of his innings in 2003, the modern master Ricky Ponting was hitting sixes with one hand. These are some of the finest batsmen to have played the game. Gilchrist’s innings was that good.

It made loudest the statement the Australians have made all World Cup: We are the Big Daddies. Then one more time: We are the Big Daddies.

The Sri Lankan bowlers may have not risen to the occasion but after watching a tournament full of Australia taking apart teams it is possible to empathise with their plight. The thing about Australia is that you don’t know what hits you and nothing can prepare you for it. They leave you dazed and senseless and feeling in every way unworthy. It is difficult to stand straight let alone bowl and field like champs with stars buzzing around the head. So demoralising was Gilchrist’s assault, for example, that after being slapped for yet another boundary, the unflappable Chaminda Vaas bowled five wides and followed it with a boundary down the legside which would have been more wides were it not for a faint touch.