Australia might have re-asserted their dominance by winning their fifth World Cup, but their boorish behaviour in the final is a blot "no amount of rubbing will ever remove," writes Greg Baum in the Sydney Morning Herald
It was the sort of ugliness the ICC had promised to crack down on in this tournament. Like footballers who used to run amok in grand finals until the penalties were doubled, Australia's cricketers seemed to take the attitude that in a World Cup final, as long as they won, no punishment - no matter how stringent -could hurt them.
No team in the World Cup played with more "passion, excitement, adrenalin" than New Zealand, but the Kiwis explicitly and scrupulously refrained from parlaying that into boorishness.