These days, I don't follow cricket closely enough to say anything particularly insightful, but it seems to me that this Australian team has done what so many Australian sporting teams have done over the years, which is to grind out a victory through sheer force of will (with a decent sprinkling of talent thrown in), despite the odds seemingly being stacked against them. Yep, they got away with "one or two players doing something special each time and the others hardly contributing", all the way through to the point where they were standing on the podium for the sixth time in ten World Cups (no other country has won more than two). India were apparently by far the "better side", but they still lost and I would argue that it's that grit and determination that has characterised so many Australian sporting sides that did for them in the end. Obviously this is a UK-based forum, so there's an underlying bias at work (and, yes, I'm an Australian channelling my own underlying bias), but I still find it slightly baffling that Glenn Maxwell's completely extraordinary back-to-back innings were dismissed with a sardonic remark or two and little else. Apparently during a big chunk of his double century he was in so much pain he couldn't even move his feet when he was facing a delivery. But good on him and good on the rest of the team for producing an incredible series of performances after a very shaky start and being there to lift the trophy at the end.
