• Defeated Australia by 9 wickets (22 balls remaining)
• Defeated West Indies by 52 runs
• Defeated South Africa by 6 wickets (11 balls remaining)
• Defeated India in semi-final by 52 runs

Unfortunately, England was tearing up the other side of the draw even more savagely. Their victories were 10 wickets (26 balls remaining), 71 runs, 63 runs, 8 wickets (3 balls remaining).

New Zealand and England were clearly the best teams, with England being slightly better. That doesn’t explain what happened in the final, however – a right thrashing:

New Zealand 85/10 (20 overs)
England 86/4 (17 overs)

England played excellent cricket in 5 out of their 5 games and were deserving winners. New Zealand played excellent cricket in 4 out of their 5 games and so they deserve high praise, second in the world is an excellent result. However, I was saying pretty much exactly this three months ago when NZ lost in the final of the 50-over world cup. I can’t help but also feel quite disappointed that the scenario has played itself out almost identically.

“Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence, ” according to Auric Goldfinger (“Three times is enemy action.”), so we should extend them the benefit of the doubt and accept that they just happened to pull out two of their less impressive performances in finals against England. Next time though, I’ll be expecting more.

(Now I’m pretty useless in reporting on women’s cricket I’ll admit. I don’t give it the attention it deserves. However, I think I can still fairly comment and say I think it is disrespectful of Cricinfo to list women’s cricket, even the final of a world cup, under “Others” in the list of live scores, as in not “International” or “Domestic”.)