CWC 2023: The Ratings

Ok here we go, the one I could get attacked for....sorry Indianos!

India

Positives
  1. The bowling is the best India has ever had in the limited overs format. Bumrah and Shami are Indian all timers, Kuldeep and Jadeja are a handful on helpful wickets and the back ups, whether that be Siraj, Pandya or Ashwin round off a solid unit. It's not quite the world eaters their media would have you believe but it's the best India have ever put out.
  2. Captaincy...this has been a negative for some teams but say what you want about Rohit but he is a thinking man's leader. A far superior captain in terms of bowler rotation and tactics than Kohli and maybe even Dhoni in this format. People will get made about that but it's the truth.
  3. Powerplay batting, which holds the key to a successful modern ODI score and India had it down to a tee. Rohit was usually the catalyst which allowed for numbers 3 and 4 to bat at a much more sustainable pace. Much like England before them, going hard at the beginning was the key to some big scores.

Negatives
  1. A lack of big game mentality: India succumbed to the pressure, to superior tactics and ultimately their own hype in the final. This was supposed to a coronation via procession but once the first 2 wickets fell they could not trust a patchy lower order and a very long tail. Guys who were tried and failed in the big moments were retained which is not the hallmark of a champion side.
  2. All rounder, what all rounder? Jadeja and Pandya were supposed to be key but the moment Pandya was injured, Jadeja looked only half the player and India had no one else could take the crucial lower order spot. Pandya himself is now 30 so he hasn't got a huge amount of time left, they need to start grooming his replacement now!
  3. Arrogance...from Kohli not knowing how he could lose his wicket, to Rohit getting too many starts, to Sky walking out like a cheap Viv impersonator, the batting side is full of too many posers and too few hard boiled winners. There needs to be a chance and some grit ,determination and skill level brought in from 1-6, so that Kohli doesn't always have to do the heavy lifting.

Entertainment Factor: 7/10
India won so many game so easily, it wasn't competitive enough but some of the strokes from Rohit and Kohli in this tournament were world class!

Overall Rating: 8/10
This is not to be mistaken with scores I gave to teams like Afghanistan which was very much how they expected to perform, this is an overall rating in comparison to all teams and India were indeed second best.
 
The CHAMPS are here!

Australia

Positives
  1. The grit, the determination, the Aussie way....Australia started the tournament with Smith way out of form, Labuschagne not even an ODI regular, no truly top level spinner, Hazlewood and Starc both carrying niggles and years beyond their best in 2015 and good ol' Davey Warner on his last legs. Somehow, with all that baggage, they managed a sprint finish by employing Head you made a come back after a serious injury and played 3 match winning games, making do with Zampa and Maxwell as the spin "attack" and pulling off a miracle against Afghanistan...which when we look back at it will just be a minor miracle in a nation which produces cricketing miracles like India do cheap action flicks...a dime a dozen!
  2. The man, the myth, the Cummins! Pat has been a startling inclusion as ODI captain and for a man who claims that "I'm still new to the format" he led his men like a seasoned, grizzle old pro. The brilliance of the bowling tactics on show in the final are up there with Imran's strangling of the Windies in the late 80s and Bodyline a century ago.
  3. Fielding...fine this is an obvious one and people will just roll their eyes but let's not forget Australia started the tournament almost at the bottom of the chances taken chart. They ended the tournament with an all time great fielding performance, starving the Indians of close to 30 or more runs and causing their batsman to hit out and get out.

Negatives
  1. The start to the tournament is the obvious number one pick. This was the first Aussie team I have watched that looked clueless, worn out and ready to go home.
  2. Steve Smith: this is likely his last world cup and maybe the end of his ODI run. The performances throughout the tournament were poor apart from maybe a couple of half decent scores. In the final he looked so out of it he didnt even bother reviewing a close call. Times up for the guitarist.
  3. A lack of genuine spinning threat, they got away with it here but the team needs a genuine world class spinner in the ranks.

Entertainment Factor: 10/10
From Maxwell's unworldly heroics to Heads remarkable come back, to Warne hammering Pakistan, to Starc putting in a few more match winning overs, the accuracy of Hazlewood and just the sheer brilliance of Cummins, this was Aussie cricket on a roll.

Overall Rating: 9/10
The best side in the tournament.
 
By that same @noducksallowed logic the team that tops the round robin table should be champs, and in fact have a better claim because they won most matches.

Bollocks. India were the best team in the tournament despite weaknesses. This Australian side looked vulnerable until the Final where they turned it on another level.
 
The best team on paper or even performance until the final stages not winning a knockout tournament at the end is what makes the format of it so great. You’d have to be proper mad to call the Indian side of 1983 better than the West Indian one even if we beat them twice in that tournament to win it all.
 
I have to agree that India were miles ahead of the rest put together. The blip in the final was unexpected.

The discussion surrounding the best team of the cup isn't decided by the winner alone. Just to back up a bit, here are a few other World Cups, their winners and their best teams

WinnerBest Team
1983​
IndiaWest Indies
1992​
PakistanNew Zealand
1996​
Sri LankaSouth Africa
1999​
AustraliaSouth Africa
2015​
AustraliaNew Zealand/South Africa
2023​
AustraliaIndia

*I'll need someone to back provide details on 1987- I was born that year and hence do not much.
 
harishankar said:
By that same @noducksallowed logic the team that tops the round robin table should be champs, and in fact have a better claim because they won most matches.

Bollocks. India were the best team in the tournament despite weaknesses. This Australian side looked vulnerable until the Final where they turned it on another level.
Click to expand...

Nope, your claiming I made a claim I never made.

A tournament is made up of whatever formats it contains, the team that comes out of that format on top is the best. End of. Unless your definition of best is different to the rest of the English dictionary.

It's also been made abundantly clear, in many cases by Indians themselves, that India did away with ICC consultants and made pitches how they wanted to. This tournament was played like a bilateral home series not an ICC tournament. You can whinge and cry India were the best team but they got hammered in a final where the cup ceremony took over an hour to prep and in that time they didn't even have the ability to change the drones so it showed Australia as champs rather than India.

I'll end with the best pic of the tournament and how most of the Indians on this forum are behaving:

1700648404810.png
 
India were just too dominant, come on.
 
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