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)