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Originally Posted by FaaipDeOiad
Australia had a consistently superior record to South Africa in head to head ODIs in that period though, particularly in knockout matches. SA may have had better players in a head-to-head matchup, but there's no doubt that Australia had better players in pressure situations, and I think you underrate the leadership of Waugh compared to Cronje, given the impact that his leadership had in those two crucial matches in the '99 WC..
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Consistently superior head to head record? Between 95 and 00, SA had a 14-10 record against Australia and that includes a complete thrashing of them in the titan cup in 96/97 as well as complete dominance over them in the C & U series in 97/98(until the finals).
http://stats.cricinfo.com/guru?sdb=t...ields=viewtype
No SA were never the best team under pressure, particularly when it came to semi finals and finals but anyone can see that they had a far superior ODI record than Australia during that period against all nations and that they consistently had a much better XI on the field than Australia. As far as leadership is concerned, its blatantly obvious to anyone that Cronje was streets ahead of Steve Waugh in terms of leadership, match fixing or not.
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Originally Posted by FaaipDeOiad
Warne, Bevan and Steve Waugh thrived under pressure in a huge way, while a handful of South African players really came apart pretty badly. Being the better side isn't just about consistently performing against all opposition, it's about performing when it counts and winning key matches.
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SA might not have had the best record against Australia in tournament finals, but that doesnt however mean that they werent winning ODI series and finals otherwise. they still won the trophy in sharjah in 96 against India and Pakistant(walked all over them), the centenary trophy in kenya with SL and Pak in 96, the standard bank series with India and Zim in 97, the wills quadrangular tournament with pak, sl and WI in 97/98, the standard bank series with pak and SL in 98, the mini world cup in 98 and the standard bank series with England and zim in 99/00. They'd also beaten plenty of other teams in bilateral series in the meantime. To say that they werent better than Australia as a team because they didnt beat them in crunch games is pushing it IMO because they were definetly winning tournaments against other teams.
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Originally Posted by FaaipDeOiad
edit: Incidentally, Ponting also averaged 40 odd going into that WC. More than Mark Waugh, in fact.
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Yes Australia had about 3 good batsmen-M. Waugh, Bevan and Ponting. Steve Waugh was acceptable, as was gilchrist and the rest werent even established batsmen in the side(Lehmann, martyn, blewett, divenuto,law, moody, julian or even mark taylor and whoever else it was that was playing at the time). Compare this with SA who had Kirsten, Cronje, Klusener, Rhodes, Kallis all of whom were averaging 40 or thereabouts. Then there was also Cullinan,mcmillan Pollock and Boucher all of whom were extremely effective players despite what their average suggests.