Warner belts Australia to close win over Sri Lanka

Swann is one of the best spin bowlers against left handers in the world.

Swan? Plenty of spinners better than him around.

All good points. In regards to Pattinson I don't know but he is young and needs experience. Of course giving a young player experience in a finals series is maybe not the best place.

Brisbane, and Queensland in general, has never really been a cricket stronghold. Sydney and Adelaide are probably the strongest fans per capita. For all the size of the MCG 5000 less people turned up than the last Australia match at the SCG plus tickets for Sydney matches are much more expensive than MCG.

why is it when people say, "crickets still going", yet you look at the football codes, their seasons twice as long as the cricket. Australia misses bowlers like McGrath and Bracken. Both of those bowlers didn't bowl fast, rather medium fast and accurate, which meant the batsmen had to make the pace themselves. I resckon what Australia should do in the powerplays is in the bowling one, have Lee and pattinson bowl, while in the batting one, have Doherty, D.Hussey and Watson bowl. Have lee bowl his last overs in overs 41-44. Australia needs to find another death bowler to go with Watson.

Well done Dave Warner but I think he has some serious technical work to do. His work against spinners is ordinary. No sweep, no footwork, and doesn't have that turn to leg, behind square. He really struggled to score against the SL spinner despite having batted for ages. Graham Swan will make him look silly unless he develops more to his game. Compare him to M Hussey, who got Monty Panesar to bowl 25 million deliveries at him till he became a good player of spin. Justin Langer? Are you listening?

Is the cricket still going?

Watson does that with an average around 40 though, so he's alot more consistent. He's also hit 37 50's from those 208 games as opposed to Warners 7 from 73. I agree that Warner is still finding his feet and will be a very good ODI player, though despite that 163, Forrest stil has a higher average then Warner in this series. Certainly Warner can consider himself quite lucky to have been picked for the final, though he obviously repaid the faith in spades! I just get worried when people start ignoring a players 10 bad/average performances because of the one good performance that may or may not be around the corner (admittedly that innings yesterday was exceptional.) He doesn't need to get 50's or 100's every innings but he does need to get past 20-30 alot more often then he currently does. In his 9 innings this tri-series he's had 5 scores below 20, which isn't good enough for an opener. In his 19 career ODI innings he's only passed 25 runs six times. I'm not calling for his axing, just pointing out that he's not quite there yet and we should refrain from declaring him "untouchable" until he can find some level of consistency in the format.

All i can say is thank you for One-day cricket and thank you for the tri-series.....this format of the game has been easily the most entertaining of the summer. Pity that CA decided that the series should go into March. Had the scheduling been right and the 3-match finals series finished last Sunday....there would have been a much bigger crowd. The first round of the NRL was always going to get more attention and media coverage than the cricket.

I said before in one of my posts on this website, that Sri Lanka is Australia's worst nightmare. The Australians would be extremely relieved just to beat Sri Lanka last night. As I pointed out, Sri Lanka is a dangerous opponet, as was evidenced in the 1996 World Cup Final in Lahore. In retrospect, this is Australia's wake-up call. And how timely to have it too, just a few weeks out from the West Indies tour.

Watson only has 8 hundreds in 208 matches so that isn't the issue. Warner is obviously still finding his feet in this format, hence his average is poor in both domestic and international. I still don't think Warner has got the balance quite right, if a guy can get a 60 ball hundred in both Test and T20 then I see no reason why he can't do it in this format. None the less if you look at the last 5 games aka a standard ODI series then Warner's stats read 43, 7, 68, 6, 163 so basically a failure 1 in 2 games, certainly not all that inconsistent.

Damn right. I know people who won't go because of the price alone.

What is the use of a guy like Warner belting the canvas off the cricket ball scoring 163 runs and his team mates letting him down in the field. The defence of the Aussie's 321 was pathetic, dropped catches, overthrows, missed fielding, not up to scratch of first class cricketers and not even trying to catch a ball out wide from Lee was un acceptable and that player ? (name escapes me) should be hauled over the coals, unless he had a very, very good excuse (maybe light in his eyes) ?. Sri Lanka, should have won that game in my books, it would have been up there with one of the greatest come back wins and the Aussies were very lucky, you can see that in Clarkes face after that catch. A great first final match, someone had to win it and i think both supporters got their monies worth. And finally, i wish everyone would get off Warners back, he is doing his job and doing it good for someone who never played Shield Cricket and is playing for Australia, go get em David.

How right you are Steve !

Also, 2 hours versus 8.

1. It was a magnificent innings and shows exactly what he is capable of. Having said that though, he doesn't do this once every five innings in this format,in fact he's only made 4 centuries in almost 75 domestic and international one day games, and his career average is stil 29. Like Sehwag, he will be very inconsistent but hopefully this gives him the confidence boost that he needs to fulfill his potential in the format. It shows his potential but he still has a long way to go. 2. We have used a bit of rotation with our batsmen, though it has been hampered by Clarke's injuries and Ponting's axing. Hussey was rested for one game early and all the talk was that Ponting and Warner would have been rested except for Clarke's injury along with Ponting's loss of form and subsequent "permanent rest." I do agree that we should have found some game to rest Warner as he has played the entire summer and there's no real break before he goes to the WIndies. 3. It's going to be hard to break them up after yesterday! I do prefer Watson as an opener in the shorter formats so I can see your point here. The good thing about Wade is that he can also come in at 6-7 so is very flexible. I can't see them changing it any time soon though. 4. I agree. His ODI record has never been great. He had that one fantastic game early on but has struggle since. Like Siddle, he may just not be suited to the format. We might as well keep him in the squad until after the WIndies to give him a real run at it but we have enough fast bowlers in the ranks now that can come in if he doesn't perform in the format. There's nothing wrong with using him as a pure test bowler. 5. Mackay, and Forrest for that matter, can consider themselves very unlucky. Mackay is our 2nd leading wicket taker this series behind Christian (who's played 9 games to Mackay's 6) so it's hard to believe that his axing was based on performance. I would have thought it would be better to give Pattinson a Shield match to best prepare him for the WIndies test series. 6. He didn't have the best game last night, but I think his series behind the stumps has been pretty good overal. I haven't seen enough of Nevill to make a really good judgement on him and paine's injury obviously takes him out of the equation for a while yet. Given it looks like it will be a choice bwteeen Wade and Haddin for the WIndies series, I'd pick Wade any day. Give him a chance and, if he doesn't do the job, bring in Paine/Nevill. Most countries have different keeprs for different formats these days anyway.

I think a few things have come out of this game. 1. Warner has to open, and you have to live with the intermittent failures, even if he gets 5 failures in a row. It was aquite a mature batting effort - he picked his ball and his time to attack. 2. This shows why rotation should not only apply to bowlers. Warner has played every single game this summer and has had a niggle or two, and he should have been rested at the relevant stages and worked on in physio and rehab. They play a lot of intense cricket and need rests. Don't think that batting poses no risks. Warner must have run 70-80 of those - that's 80 x 20m, or 1.6km, and a lot of it flat out. Sprint, rest, sprint, rest, that fatigues your body and if you've got a small niggle, it can become a bigger problem. 3. I still don't think Warner-Wade is the right opening combo. I think it should be Warner-Watson. Watson is a better starter and we'll be 1-for-little less often with Watto there. 4. Hilfy is not a great ODI bowler. He's a wicket taker and plugs away well in tests, but he's never been a great ODI bowler. The selectors were swayed by the 4/5-for he took 1st game back in favourable conditions. 5. Was it arrogant to put Pattinson, who's hardly played for a while, back into the team at the expense of someone like Mackay who has been solid all series? Patto should have played a shield game or two. 6. This is why Wade should not be our tests keeper. We can't afford to have a test keeper who has rough patches like that. I can live with his sometimes sloppy glovework in the shorter formats, but not in the tests. I think for the tests it shoud be Paine first choice and then Nevill.

Point taken David, although there is a difference. It can rain during any football match and you're still guaranteed to see play. The same cannot be said for cricket. Why go to a game on a miserable day if you're going to have continual rain interruptions and a potentially more limited number of overs. It's a massive difference which could help explain the discrepancy.

The on-field quality of this series has been fantastic. It's just a shame that it's been scheduled for far too long. Having a series like this extend for over a month is far too long. FIFA gets through it's World Cup in the same amount of time. Ticket prices could be another reason for the low crowds. I don't know what they were in Brisbane but the cheapest adult ticket at the SCG games was $56 ($26 for a kid and $48 for pensioner/concession.) When you consider cheapest adult ticket at the T20 in Sydney was $30, and the most expensive adult ticket for tonight's NRL game is only $40 then you can start to see why people might be turned off an ODI match. Those prices might be OK in November-early February when there's no other sport to compete against but if you're tossing up which sport to go to out of the one of the football codes or cricket, ticket prices wil be a big factor. I'd be interested to know what the prices were for the ODI yesterday and Reds game on Saturday, but I can't imagine that they'd be that much different to the Sydney equivalent (though the SCG usually has the most expensive ticket prices.)

Maybe we are all cricket-ed out, and footy is back on again.