Michael Burgess: Let's face it - we lost

Australia made no contest of a one-sided World Cup final. Photo / Getty Images

There's been an element of the 'Emperor's New Clothes' in our reaction to the Cricket World Cup final defeat.

As in the famous fable, everybody knows the Black Caps blew it last Sunday - in a big way - but it feels like no one is prepared to say as much. It might be unpatriotic. Why bother trying to learn from a defeat, when you can almost ignore it happened and it might go away?

Last Monday's newspapers had a triumphant tone, reminding us how proud we needed to be of the team and one even carried a photo of the Black Caps in celebratory mode - on the front page. This is after a huge loss in one of the most important cricket matches in our history. It felt like no one wanted to face the truth, after the nation had jumped on the bandwagon. The game turned into one of the most lopsided finals in the competition's history and was much worse than the painful 1992 semifinal defeat against Pakistan.

It's interesting to note how our attitudes have changed. When the favoured Kiwis lost the 1988 World Cup final - after, just like Sunday, an awful start that ended the game as a contest - there was a New Zealand Rugby League inquiry that lasted months. There have been similarly painful dissections with the All Blacks (in 1991, 1999, 2003 and 2007), Silver Ferns (1999) and All Whites (2013).

In all cases, we are talking about the same thing - non-performance on the biggest stage, when it matters most. Yes, the Black Caps were brilliant in getting to the final but once there, you have to perform.

Instead they accumulated four ducks in one innings, when there had been a total of only seven in the last eight World Cup finals. Included was Brendon McCullum's crazy dismissal, the first time a wicket had been lost in the first over of a final. They didn't bat their 50 overs and Australia reached the target with more than 16 overs to spare.

Before the final, we mocked Australian suggestions that the MCG would be too big and smugly produced data that showed most of our tournament sixes would have carried in Melbourne. But hitting over the boundary in cricketing doll houses such as Eden Park and Wellington Stadium, safe in the knowledge that even a severe miscue will carry, is quite different to reaching the stands in Melbourne, where there is much less margin for error.

Who knows when such an opportunity will come again? Australia have a young team and should only get better, as will South Africa, while England will surely rebound. Pakistan are due a golden era again one day and Sri Lanka and India will rebuild. It won't be easy in 2019.