the best players for the scorchers tonight were duckworth and lewis
Not true. The Scorchers still had to score at more than 10 an over from the get go, which isn't as easy to do in T20 as it appears.
As I said, the biggest difference between winning and losing tonight was that over from Alex Keath. That singlehandedly lost the game for the Stars/won the game for the Scorchers. And yes, lots of questions will have to be asked regarding why Warney didn't bowl. It obviously wasn't because of injury otherwise he wouldn't have played altogether tonight. He was simply too scared and you shouldn't even be selected at T20 level if you're not prepared to take responsibility, be a man and have balls of steel. He could've learnt a huge lesson from Damien Fleming (although he's crap as a commentator) in the '96 and '99WC semi-finals.
The bottom line is: the party's over. There was huge publicity last BBL and CA relied very heavily on Warne (as well as the other former Aussie players Hogg/MacGill/Hayden to a lesser extent) to promote the tournament. CA have tried to do the same thing again this series (e.g. not punishing Warne more heavily over the Samuels incident and instead saying that it was good for the game etc.) and this year's BBL has had nowhere near the level of excitement and interest as last year (as shown by both the overall crowds and tv ratings).
CA is like a rudderless boat - they have no plan and are just putting all their eggs in one basket. Washed up 40+ year old has-beens are hogging the show and thus keeping other promising young talent out of the side. They are eventually going to have to accept the fact that Warne isn't going to be there in 3 years time, as well as the other ex-internationals such as Muralitharan. What are they going to do then when crowds and tv ratings continue to plunder, and more disillusioned fans arise because they struggle to have an affinity for the city franchises (compared with the old state franchise format) as players from Sheffield Shield/Ryobi Cup state sides just simply jump from one state to another with impunity?
I know I'm going to come under some scrutiny from other forum members with some of the comments I've made, but I just think that if more people listened to pundits like Thommo who aren't prepared to be PC blowhards, common sense would prevail in CA and they wouldn't throw around all these spurious ideas such as a rotation policy in test matches etc. There's going to be a lot of accountability coming someone's way in CA and shit will be hitting the fan soon. In fact, I hate to say this as an Aussie but if we DID lose both Ashes series over the next 12 months, the positive from that will be that a lot of those nuffies like Pat Howard will be out of the job they didn't deserve in the first place.
