I love you, War.
- reached the semi-final: doesn't matter they're still bad and they would have done worse if Watson allowed it
- Bailey's innings: doesn't matter he's still bad
- Starc and Cummins' performance: doesn't matter, shouldn't have been picked
- David Hussey's 10th utterly rubbish T20I performance in the past couple of years: doesn't matter still great
But seriously I do agree on the spinners. I don't think Hogg bowled that badly and really a lot of spinners didn't take the wickets they'd have liked; there are some good averages, but game by game a lot of 1 or 0 for 20-something with that one 3-4 wicket game; Hogg just didn't play that one game of awesome.
The pitches, although they got dry, only looked to have any menace in them at the start. This one even looked a bit refreshed and flattened from the couple of days' rest. Spinners have gotten wickets chiefly out of bad shot selection and players just not reading variations. Against good batting and batsmen knowing what was coming down, the ball was seldom turning or bouncing obscenely, only coming on a bit too painfully for a good slog. I guess that's Colombo for you as well.
And with Doherty I'll put it out there that I don't know what he offers if he can't bowl at least a couple of non-boundaries at the death anyway. One of the reasons to prefer him over any other average spinner or all-rounder is his change-ups; the stutter ball, yorkers and big changes of pace. He's meant to be the guy who comes into weird pressure situations. So if he actually has no assets for such a situation, then you can pick not only more accurate spinners, but ones who can bat too. I know there aren't that many options, but still a couple.
Or dare I say it, you could pick a seamer.
This was the real problem for me, that having two specialist spinners left Australia needing to carry their spinners rather than what some teams were doing and rolling out one after the other. It's just not their strong suit.
They certain could have chosen myriad seamers. However, Hilfy for one, is very good at T20. In the past year he's bowled 45 overs, with an average of 17.3 and economy of 6.5. The worst he's bowled in an international is 1/32. His wasn't a crazy selection that they fortunately didn't have to expose; Australia simply protected their opponents from one of their good bowlers, in fact one of the better players in the whole squad. He could have helped put more pressure on the batsmen at the start and freed up overs of pace later. I maintain that Australia should have picked their best 4 bowlers throughout, instead of producing crazy reasons not to.
With the score already going stupid, I could see the point of taking risks. It wasn't about the last over, it was about all the others being the last chance to shoot the buggers down before they drop the bomb. Every action in that innings needed to be about removing Gayle or Pollard before the 20th over, because they'd still have made about 200 facing Watson. That's also why Hogg didn't get a 4th over, because he couldn't get the crucial wicket. Once 19 overs were bowled, it really didn't matter.
Gayle managed to hit toe end shots for 4, inside edges for 4, shots for 2 that he didn't think would be even close to 2 but it went to that giant vacuum at midwicket. He also cleared the boundary a lot 
Just seemed to me that the ball seemed to miss the fielders a LOT, often by good batting, but there was a large slice of luck as well. 
Bailey didn't seem to work out how to use Hogg too well either. Need to make sure he's bowling at guys who can't pick him. Samuels struggled vs Hogg in the group stages, so it was good to see that battle again, but Hogg bowled only 3 balls at Gayle last night. I would have thought Hogg vs Gayle would be one of the better matchups for Australia and he should have bowled at him more. If Bailey had decided Doherty would bowl the last over relatively early, Hogg should have been bowling instead of Dave Hussey in that 15th over that went for 19.
