World Cup upsets continue unabated – Australia lift ICC Pub Quiz trophy

---

SRNZPA: The little fancied Australians won the ICC World Cup Pub Quiz in the Barbados Holiday Inn’s conference rooms 3 & 4 last night. They beat pre-quiz favourites South Africa in a play off round, with the closest guess to the 1893 invention of Peanut Butter. This was a massive boost for Australia, who have an ignominious record in competition requiring brains, while South Africa added to their history of failing at the final hurdle.

A jubilant Ricky Ponting told journalists “The boys are made up. No-one gave us a VB’s chance in Warney’s fridge to win, but we showed some real ticker in here to pull it out. Every Australian can be proud of their team. We’re going to enjoy ourselves tonight, yeah.”

Australia were almost written off early, making schoolboy errors like identifying Bob Hawke as The Muppet Show’s Sam the Eagle in the world leaders round. Crucially, their choice of double point Joker round was ‘Offensively Moronic Commentators’, in which the Channel Nine team featuring heavily.

South Africa established a massive lead early on, before being slowly dragged back to the pack. Sean Pollock proved his worth as a world class all rounder in the music round, picking up a Stock, Aitken Waterman hat trick of Kylie Minouge, Sinitta and the Reynolds Girls in quick succession. “There are a lot of long faces at that table” admitted Pollock. “I’m disappointed ‘cos we haven’t learned from our mistakes – I’m not looking forward to facing the music back home.”

Dark Horses New Zealand made the semi finals with a minimum of fuss, and were many critic’s choice for the title, but spectacularly collapsed on the ‘Celebrity Babies’ round. Stephen Fleming said “I’m gutted, Ham Marshall bought a stack New Ideas with him, and I thought our gossip was going to very, very strong indeed. We argued and argued over Bruce Willis and Demi Moore’s kids names. I wrote down Scout, but Macca rubbed it out and put Brownie. That’s quizzing, I guess.”