The Exciting Eight

(Image courtesy: New Indian Express)

L Suresh takes a look at the top teams in contention for cricket’s biggest trophy.

By the end of January, the World Cup had all the makings of a long, boring and utterly predictable tournament. Of the 16 teams, eight were clearly there for the joyride. Of the remaining, six would be vying with one another for the losing finalist’s spot. The seventh, England, would be a non-competitive entry after 230 successive defeats against every team in the world. And Australia would come, play, shake their heads in disappointment when they went for four runs an over, clown around at the odd misfield and go back home with the trophy.

20 days and six matches changed all that. England beat Australia three consecutive times in the Commonwealth Bank Series while New Zealand did the same at home. Suddenly South Africa was No. 1 in the ODI rankings, an out-of-contention England was now looking at winning the World Cup, the Kiwis had their tails up, India beat Sri Lanka and the West Indies at home - the equation had been altered.

For the first time since the inception of the World Cup, eight teams enter the fray, each with a realistic chance of winning the World Cup. Here's a look at the exciting eight.

South Africa
Breakneck bowling speeds, high fielding standards, strong hitting – these form the citius, altius and fortius of cricket and nobody does it better that the South Africans. India and Pakistan have just been convincingly beaten. Australia has been dethroned. So the Proteas have every reason to ride into the tournament, high on confidence.

But strange things happen when the big event is round the corner – especially to South Africa. From 1992 to 2003, tales of their World Cup campaigns range from the heartbreaking to the hilarious. And now, they enter the tournament as the first No. 1 never to have been to the finals of a World Cup.

At 50 for 4, most teams would mentally fast-forward to the next match – unless they have Prince, Kemp, Boucher and Pollock to come. Add Smith, Kallis and Gibbs to this list and you are looking at a team that can chase a 400-plus total on its day. But the all-or-nothing bowling attack - an army of right-arm pace bowlers bowling in the 135-145 kms range - will determine if the Proteas can win the World Cup. If low and slow are two words that do the rounds during the tournament, this team can add yet another disaster to its tally and start preparing for the 2011 World Cup.

Australia
There’s a reason for Australia’s fall from the pedestal to be much celebrated - it finally has brought a degree of balance to cricket. For how long can humans play against big-talking androids and robots that never failed?

And as humans, Australia find themselves associated with an embarrassing statistic – four of the highest run chases ever are against them. It is difficult to imagine that a team can come undone with just two players – Andrew Symonds and Brett Lee - missing from its ranks. And there really couldn't have been a worse time to add injury to insult. Even as they were losing their No. 1 tag, they had to contend with a list of injuries that looked like it had found its way from Duncan Fletcher’s writing pad - Hayden’s toe, Ponting's back, Symonds' bicep, Clarke’s hip and the worst of all, Brett Lee's injured ankle that has put him out of reckoning for the World Cup.

Despite their setbacks, Australia are still a force to reckon with. Symonds is flexing his bicep into submission. Tait is practicing reverse swing at 160 kms an hour. And there is always the five man army - Hayden, Gilchrist, Ponting, McGrath and Hussey - that can bring home the cup - for the third time in succession.

New Zealand
Kiwis down Australia 3-0. Now that's a newspaper headline that Fleming and his boys would love to wake up to every morning. And the fact that it was done without any notable contribution from the skipper will make players like Fulton, Ross Taylor, Craig McMillan and McCullum believe in themselves. 3-0 is not just the score of the recently concluded Hadlee-Chappell series, but also a record to remind them that they have beaten the Aussies thrice in epic chases.

Like South Africa, the Kiwis have plenty of allrounders, great batting depth, an abundance of bowling options and tremendous fielding skills – in short, everything but the wings of experience that stops them from taking flight in big tournaments. And there is always the big question - will the man with a license to kill last a month and a half without injuries?

They are the only other team besides South Africa that hasn't made it to the final of a World Cup. And judging by Oram's fanatic resolve to do away with a finger to play the tournament, this might be one record they are likely to correct this time around.

Pakistan
They’ve lost their best allrounder to injury, their pace spearheads to dubious claims of slow recuperation and their pinch hitter to an ICC suspension for the initial matches. Their leading players have been huge underperformers in the world cup, with Afridi averaging 10.9 in World Cup matches against his overall average of 23.17, Inzamam scoring at 23.81 (overall average 39.68) and Younis Khan managing 21 (overall average 31.61). Yet, if Pakistan are still considered to a potential threat by other teams, it shows the enormous reserves of talent in the side.

On the positive side of it all, Pakistan are not new to controversies and last minute withdrawals. But what Inzy will have to figure out is if he can do an Imran and rally his team to become world champs. The last time that happened, the proceeds went towards a hospital. But Inzy's current problem is that his boys have already been contributing to hospitals, running up huge bills for surgery and recuperation. If Umar Gul's injuries do not heal, if Kamran Akmal's performances do not improve and if Pakistan’s long standing opener problems aren't sorted out, Inzamam’s hopes of a dream run could well turn out to be a marathon nightmare.

India
The story of India’s recent one day performances in two lines: We’ve won convincingly at home. We’ve lost predictably abroad. But recent developments have given a billion Indians hope - Dada Version 2.0 has been an extremely effective improvement over the original. Youngsters like Uthappa and Dinesh Kartik have added batting flair to high fielding standards and there is always the Wall to fall back upon. India’s bowling seems to have sorted itself out as well, with the pace duo of Munaf and Zaheer and the eternal spin twins, Harbhajan and Kumble looking in great form.

But what is most baffling is India’s strange gameplan that involves the five bowler theory – this when every team including Australia has been trying to lengthen its batting line-up to No. 8. Despite having Sachin, Sehwag, Ganguly and Yuvraj for slow bowling options, we have failed in areas where Gayle and Samuels, Symonds and Clarke, Afridi and Shoaib Malik, and Jayasuriya and Dilshan have succeeded.

But as always, India’s hopes squarely rest on one man. The first time he top-scored in the World Cup in 1996, we made it to the semi-finals. When he bettered that record seven years later, in 2003, we made it to the finals. One only hopes that he strikes it third time lucky.

Sri Lanka
11 years after they won the World Cup, all eyes are again on Sri Lanka. A 5-0 drubbing to England and a 2-2 tie against the Kiwis in their backyard has kept the Lankan flag flying high in recent times.

The flair factor is one parameter on which Sri Lankan batsmen constantly score high on, be it the explosive opening pair of Jayasuriya and Tharanga or the style-and-substance duo of Sangakkara and Jayawardene. But that's where the list stops - and Sri Lanka's woes begin. Atapattu has been a shadow of himself ever since he returned to the international arena. The bowling is so heavily dependant on Vaas and Muralitharan to fill in the wickets column that if they have a bad day, all is lost.

If the pitches are anything like those that India played the West Indies on last year, Sri Lanka would be rubbing its hands in glee. Slowing wickets, humid conditions, small grounds - this will be the closest they will ever get to in playing in home conditions. Two most used words in Sri Lankan cricket are ‘fast’ - the way they like to score and ‘slow’ - the way they like to bowl. The fact that they have enough options for both makes them a strong contender for the final four.

England
England should have approached the Commonwealth Bank Series finals with a statutory warning: turnarounds this fast can leave your heads spinning. Even as Vaughan, Trescothick and Harmison fell by the wayside, even as Strauss and Flintoff failed to deliver the goods, lesser mortals jumped into the brawl. Ed Joyce, Mal Loye, Collingwood and Plunkett came to the party like a bunch of gauls high on magic potion. Suddenly the men from Oz looked like Ricky Pontius and the Romans - and the assault began.

High on success, England has replaced statistics, big names, reputations and stars with a devil-may-care attitude and approaches the World Cup the way a college prepares for a culfest. While most teams satisfy themselves with a captain and a vice captain, England is possibly the only team that has to constantly travel with a captain and a backup captain. Two captains may still not be good enough for England to get into the finals, but if there's another meeting with the Aussies and should they win it, the Barmy Army will have got its money's worth.

West Indies
If there's one thing that Lara has not done that his contemporaries - Sachin, Inzy and Ponting - have, it's reaching the finals of the World Cup and finding out what it takes to be there with the best. But he has prepared his team with two great campaigns - the ICC Championship in 2004 when they came back from a near-impossible situation to beat England and the finals in 2006 when they capitulated in the opening overs of the match even before the Aussies could do something right. And this is Lara’s last chance to get his team to do things right.

Along the way, he has a few facts to contend with - no host team has ever won a World Cup playing at home. And no West Indian team in the last five editions of the tournament remotely looked like it was going to.

But this West Indian team is as specially prepared as the tracks that slow down and come to a grinding halt halfway through the match. An unbelievable batting depth, a wide pick of allrounders, ‘slower one’ specialists like Bravo and Smith, the teasing spin of Gayle and Samuels, the thunderbolts of Powell and Taylor - and of course the special calypso batting treat from Gayle, Lara, Sarwan and Chanderpaul that on its day, can out-dazzle any other performance in the world.

Chuck your jobs, stock up for a month and stay glued to your TV sets. You can't miss this for your life!

(Appeared in the New Indian Express Sunday Supplement on 11 March, 2007)

The Indian Eleven

(Image courtesy: New Indian Express)

L Suresh profiles eleven classic Indian moments when the country celebrated its heroes.

If the World Cup was the biggest stage to showcase cricket sagas, these would fit in as drama in real life. Individual brilliance, inspiring performances, unbelievable situations – and all of them Indian. Here are eleven of the very best.

#11 Chetan Sharma
1987 World Cup

In 1986, he was India's biggest villain, having gifted a six to Miandad by bowling him a full toss. A year later, Chetan Sharma would get back into the record books - and do his country proud - by claiming the first hat-trick in World Cup history. However, Ken Rutherford, Ian Smith and Ewen Chatfield will remember that they failed where Javed Miandad succeeded – by being bowled off successive deliveries, they had scripted a success story for Chetan Sharma, one where the villain becomes the hero.

#10 Sachin Tendulkar – I
1999 World Cup

Centuries have been scored in rage, in defiance, in pain... but this one was scored in grief. Hours before a match against Zimbabwe, Sachin had to rush back to India because his father had passed away. Just as the Kenyans were hoping to take advantage of the situation, a news flash made them freeze - Sachin was coming back.

It was a match they would remember – how does one forget the hiding of one's life? The hundred came off 84 balls and Sachin eventually plundered 140 off 101 balls as India motored on to 329, aided by Dravid's century. India was on the road to the Super Sixes. One man’s gaze, however, was skywards as he dedicated the innings to his father.

#9 Sachin Tendulkar – II
1996 World Cup

While the 1992 World Cup got a fleeting glimpse of Sachin, the 1996 edition had his class stamped all over. Sachin was Mr. Consistent and barring that mild aberration when he chased a widish delivery from Mark Waugh and was stumped out against Australia, it seemed that the only way to get his wicket was to run him out. 127 not out, 70, 90, 137 – and he wasn’t finished yet. Sachin went on to score 65 in the semi-finals before he was out – stumped again. As was the practice in those times, the rest of the team couldn’t rise to the occasion and India was 120 for 8. 100,000 indignant Indians in Eden Gardens showed what they thought of this display.

#8 Rahul Dravid
1999 World Cup

The world had seen the explosive hitting of Richards and the nip-and-tuck methods of Dean Jones as the two extremes of effective one day cricket. It would now see a third school of thought - a mix of grace and power as grounds strokes and aggressive pulls came together to light up the grounds at Bristol, Taunton, Birmingham and Manchester. Rahul Dravid batted in the presence of one day legends like Sachin and Sourav and produced two of his best knocks in the 1999 World Cup - 104 against Kenya and 145 against Sri Lanka – despite playing second fiddle on both occasions. But his three fifties against South Africa, England and Pakistan saw him fly solo. 461 runs in the tournament at a strike rate of over 85. Not one day material? Not quite.

#7 Ajay Jadeja
1996 World Cup

The 1992 World Cup saw a wide-eyed kid pluck an amazing catch – from right under the shadow of Jonty airborne Rhodes - to dismiss Allan Border. Four years later, the world would be treated to an equally fantastic cameo with the bat in the quarterfinals against Pakistan. India got off to a sedate start and after a shaky performance by the middle order, in walked Ajay Jadeja to demonstrate why exactly the end overs were called slog overs. Waqar yorker Younis got the ball back in a hurry for his end over toe-crushers. Ball met boundary board with such alarming regularity that Waqar was spotted muttering and gazing at his own toes in a Kill Bill moment - as though commanding them to wake up and get him out of there fast. Jadeja raced to 45 off just 25 balls, while Waqar went for 22 off his 9th over and 18 off the 10th - the celebrations that followed are talked about in the city to this day.

#6 Sunil Gavaskar
1987 World Cup

In the one day version of the game, Sunil Gavaskar had to correct the minor anomaly of a bare 100s column against his name. And then, there was the 12 year old debt to settle. His 36 not out, over the ages, had degenerated from a joke to a blot on an otherwise exemplary career. What went wrong in one World Cup would be set right in another.

It was the final group match against New Zealand in the 1987 World Cup and India had 50 overs to reach a modest target of 222. Gavaskar however couldn’t wait for that long. India won in a little over 32 overs and the world couldn't believe that the same man who took 174 balls to score 36 would race to 103 off just 88 balls. The only thing that the two innings had in common was that he remained unbeaten both times. For once, the Kiwi bowlers were thankful that their batsmen hadn't scored more.

#5: Rahul Dravid - Sourav Ganguly
1999 World Cup

India began so badly in the 1999 World Cup that as the team approached its fourth match against Sri Lanka, the venue - Taunton – almost had a jeering ring to it. Disaster struck in the first over of the match when Sadagopan Ramesh departed - and Rahul Dravid walked in, with the score reading 6 for 1. For the next 318 runs, the scorers didn't have to bother about the wickets column as Hurricane Sourav and Hurricane Dravid struck simultaneously. Vaas went for 84 off his 10, Murali was tonked for 3 sixers and 2 fours in his last couple of overs that leaked 32 runs and the duo had blasted their way into the record books for the highest partnership ever in a World Cup.

Sourav went on to score 183 runs, the highest score by an Indian in a World Cup while Dravid finished at 145, his second hundred in three days. For a brief moment, Indian fans had something to cheer about.

#4 The awesome allrounders
1983 World Cup

Who would ever have thought that a performance of 26 runs and 3 for 12 would be good enough to merit a man of the match award in the finals of a World Cup? But 1983 was the year of slow-medium pace with a dash of swing, and cameos with the bat. That lazy run-up and the square-on stance fooled the world as Mohinder Amarnath came up with two back to back match-winning performances in the semi finals - 2 for 27 and 46 - and the finals. In a group match, Roger Binny – the joint highest wicket-taker of the tournament had thwarted the Aussies with a rearguard 21 and 4 for 29. In 16.2 overs, he and Madan Lal snared 8 Aussie wickets giving away just 49 runs.

Add to this list the man who lead the way, Kapil Dev, and India got its quartet of allrounders who did the impossible. A team that couldn’t win a single match in the previous World Cup was now going back home with the glittering trophy.

#3 The pace troika
2003 World Cup

Brett Lee, Shoaib Akthar, Akram, Shane Bond, Waqar, Srinath, Zaheer, Nehra… The 2003 World Cup saw three surprise inclusions in the list of the fast and the furious, coming from a country where fast bowling had become an oxymoron after the exit of Kapil Dev.

A troubling ankle and Flintoff on the rampage – it was going to take something special for India to defend a modest total of 250. Special turned out to be simply exceptional as Nehra ran through the top, middle and the tail, bowling 10 overs on the trot and finishing with 6 for 23. Indian bowling had just found ‘the corridor’ and for the next few days, all the action was going to happen here. A fortnight later, Sri Lanka’s ordeal lasted just 23 overs as the trio returned with the spoils of victory - figures of 10 for 103 amongst them. It was Zaheer Khan’s turn against the Kiwis as he grounded them to nothing for two, just three balls into the match. At 4 for 42, he wasn’t quite finished, but the Kiwis had crumbled to 146 all out by then.

Never before had Indian pace bowling been so lethal – with Zaheer, Srinath and Nehra, our combination of left-right-left sounded like orders for a death march to batsmen.

#2 Sachin Tendulkar – III
2003 World Cup

In hindsight, most teams would have preferred not to encourage media and advertising hype of the 2003 world cup as the great African safari. How were they to know that Sachin would take it literally and be on the prowl, looking for all those bowlers who tried to provoke him by issuing challenges in print?

While he ran circles around Netherlands, Zimbabwe and Namibia at cruising speed, he stepped on the gas the moment the big teams arrived. Caddick suffered, Shoaib Akthar withered and the whole Sri Lankan attack was shell-shocked as he wielded his willow. The image was that of Darth Vader with his light saber, cutting egos down the size. Come 2007, the survivors among them will be quaking in the boots – will it be the return of the Jedi?

#1 Kapil Dev
1983 World Cup

It’s the story that mothers tell their little ones, hoping to inspire them to scale lofty heights - a tale that had a gloomy beginning and a fairytale finish. Zimbabwe had already beaten Australia in their opening match and were threatening to run away with this one too. Wickets were falling at regular intervals and the scorecard read 9 for 4 as Kapil walked in. In a matter of minutes, India were 17 for 5 and regressed to 78 for 7. From here on, the task was simple - rally a bunch of tailenders and go on a do-or-die mission. Kapil launched his one-man army act – and the 100 came off just 72 balls. 16 fours and 6 sixers later, Kapil was motoring along at 175 off 138 balls – it didn’t matter that eight wickets were down. So were eleven Zimbabweans.

Though it is unfortunate that no acknowledged footage of this innings exists, it doesn’t come as a surprise that this miracle wasn’t captured on film. Neither was the creation of the universe or the parting of the red sea.

(Appeared in the New Indian Express Sunday Supplement on 04 March, 2007)