Skip to main content

A rollicking tournament

So the Champions Trophy has brought upset after upset. My pre-tournament semi-finalists would have been Australia, India, South Africa, and Sri Lanka. Two of these teams are nearly out after today's results and India (unless they can bring about a very quick turnaround) will join them on the sidelines tomorrow. And on current form, it looks like an England-Pakistan final is a decent chance. Some tournament the bookmakers must be having :-)

But its made for riveting watching, almost like the football world cup where one bad match can prove super costly for fancied teams. And I agree with the scribes who say that the cricket world cup should follow this format too. In fact, the format they had for the '83 and '87 World Cups was perfect. The top eight teams in two groups playing each other twice (to reward consistency) and then semis and a final. The only tinkering I would do is to make the finals best-of-three.

Anyways, to go back to this tournament its come at a great time for ODIs and showed that they still have a place. The other gratifying thing is how its shown that teams in world cricket today are really closely matched and anyone can beat anyone on a given day. Now if there was a full-strength West Indian team here, it would have been even more intriguing. For me though, the biggest surprise has been England. Their attitude most of the time seems to suggest they don't care about the shorter formats of the game so to see how positively they've played is really nice, especially given they don't have Flintoff and Pietersen. Imagine if they were around to play instead of Bopara and Wright in today's XI (for example). If they can keep this energy and pay a little more attention then they have a decent chance in the 2011 WC. Having said that, they'll probably promptly crash out at the group stage in that tournament :-)

As for this one, all bets are off and I'm making no more predictions for the semis, just hoping that there's good cricket through the rest of it!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Et tu?

As a single sport website, I think Cricinfo has brought about a revolution and the fact that they were bought by ESPN is testament to how highly valued they've become. Their editing and approach to articles/opinion has been refreshing to say the least and even though they seem to have had a lot of editorial staff movement they've usually maintained very high standards. Off late though, both in their headline styles as well as in actual content, there seems to be an occasional slippage of standards and an inching towards the modern media sensationalism which is a bit of a pity. This piece  by Siddharth Monga is a classic example. Granted that the last two press conferences by Dhoni and Sehwag  indicated clearly that the captain and his deputy did not agree on this aspect of selection but "discord", "dissent", "public sniping" feels rather presumptuous and heavy handed. Yes, it is a team sport but there is no reason why everyone on the team needs ...
1 comment
Read more

England in the 90s revisited and oh, for backup bowlers!

So its come to this finally. As the cliche goes, the wheel comes full circle. Australian selection policies these days resemble that of England from the 1990s :-) Took a quick look at the last two years and over 37 Test matches since 1 Jan 2008, Australia have used 36 different players. That's an average of roughly one additional/new player every 1.48 matches! Talk about instability. When compared to India (a new player every 1.94 matches), South Africa (2.14), England (2.24) it shows how things have changed in the last two years with regards to the power balance in Test cricket. What the overall stat also does not show directly is that most of these new players have been bowlers. With the exception of replacing Hayden and Symonds the batting line-up has been quite stable but the bowling has been the exact opposite. Indian spinners like Amit Mishra, Piyush Chawla, Ashwin, and Murali Kartik must be ruing the fact that they don't have an Australian passport! The latter in parti...
2 comments
Read more

World T20 preview: surprises in store again?

In its short history of seven years (and four editions), the World T20 has thrown up many surprises. Four different winners (each of them unfancied at the start of the tournament), with even England winning silverware. Australia have made just one final and have yet to win (but then it took them till the fifth edition to win the Champions Trophy too). Possibly the most surprising fact about the World T20 is that we're into the fifth edition but India are yet to host one. Given that their victory in the inaugural tournament led to the IPL and the face of the modern game changing, I would have expected a 1987 like scenario with the BCCI doing its utmost to host the championships but that has not been the case. Maybe the IPL brand needs protection in their opinion? The latest version in Bangladesh will throw up plenty more to add to the list of the surprises I'm sure. Its been a pleasant change already to have a proper qualifying tournament between the lower ranked teams  as opp...
Post a Comment
Read more