Monique Devereux, former chief reporter at the Herald and now Christchurch correspondent for Radio New Zealand, is at the Cricket World Cup. She brings nzherald.co.nz regular news and views from the West Indies
KEY POINTS:
I've been getting a lot of "fan mail" regarding my blog about supporting Sri Lanka over Australia.
Strewth, what an angry mob of Ockers you are!
I discussed the venomous rants with the Australian photographer I've been travelling with for the past month and he nodded sadly.
Times have changed and some of his fellow countrymen are unable to stomach the age-old transtasman banter. Instead of trading good-natured insults, they snap back with aggression. A pack of hungry dingoes. The sense of humour is becoming a rare beast in Australia.
"But you'd forget how to laugh too after 12 years of the Howard government," my Sydney friend explained.
Reflecting back on this World Cup tournament I recall that many nations were befuddled by the Kiwi sense of humour way back at the start during Finger-gate.
Jacob Oram's little joke even made CNN headlines, which meant subsequent interviews with New Zealand players were conducted with extreme seriousness.
I recall one comment made by a player that was funny at the time but obviously way too wacky to make it into any news story. Still, team management went back to the journalists afterwards saying the player asked that the comment not be used.
Only Lou Vincent dared to walk the fine line between robot serious and human. Asked in St Lucia what changed in his game to go from scoring nothing to getting a century, he deadpanned "My wife's here now".
The past eight weeks have dragged at times, but it's still hard to believe it's almost over.
As I write this, the rain is delaying play and by the looks of the rain clouds this game isn't going ahead in a hurry.
But there are plenty of supporters from both sides already here.
Loads of Aussie banners; "Australia vs The World", "Aussie World Champs, Sri Lanka Has-Beens" and "Just call it the Aussie Cup" are just a few.
Confidence? Arrogance? You be the judge. But watch for dingoes.
We sat around the dinner table last night - a South African, two Kiwis, an Indian, a Canadian, a Brit and an Aussie - and toasted Sri Lanka's good health.
Then we all raised our glasses proper, and toasted to having had a fantastic eight weeks (despite the frustrations of working in the Caribbean and the heavy PC factor), to seeing a competitive final and to getting home.
