(Image courtesy: New Indian Express)L Suresh looks back on a World Cup contested by Australia that also featured 15 other teams.
It is always said that old men tend to live in the past. With four members aged 35 and above, and five others getting there shortly, the Australian team decided not to write a new script for the finals. Being in the era of remakes and all that, they just needed to go back to the archives and rehash an old blockbuster. The choice was between two classics - the 1999 World Cup finals where they bowl first, decimate the opposition for less than 150 and get those runs in 20 overs. And the 2003 World Cup finals, where they bat first and bludgeon the opposition into submission. While the world watched with bated breath as the coin was tossed and flipped over and over, little did they realize that Ricky Ponting was actually flipping between the two scripts. Heads for the 1999 formula and tails for the 2003 version. Tails it was and yawn, Gilchrist walked in, used a squash ball to smash the cricket ball all over the park and Australia walked out with the World Cup.
It was the third time in succession that Australia was winning the World Cup. It was the third successive World Cup where an Asian team reached the final. It was the third time that an Asian team was getting mauled at the big stage. There has to be a ban on such useless statistics - or a ban on Australia playing with 15 other mediocre teams, if one wants to save the future of the World Cup. In 1999, Australia felt threatened just twice as they lost to Pakistan and New Zealand, besides levelling with South Africa in an epic semi-final. In 2003, the disparity grew even worse as they remained unbeaten through the tournament. There were a couple of matches against Pakistan and New Zealand when they found themselves with their backs to the wall for a very brief moment, but that was it. In 2007, there wasn't even a semblance of a fight from any of the other teams as the world watched the most one-sided World Cup ever.
Before the start of the World Cup, Ponting had this point about excluding minnows from the big event as it led to a whole lot of unevenly contested matches. He couldn't have been more wrong. Ireland's matches against Pakistan and Zimbabwe, and Bangladesh's matches against South Africa and India were better fought than Australia's matches against any of its opponents. And so the 2007 edition ended with Australia featuring in the most number of one-sided matches it has played in – all 11 of them.
In one of the preview packages, Dean Jones was asked what Australia would have to do to beat England. "Just turn up," came the reply. That applied to all the teams that, without an exception, froze like deer caught in the headlights of an oncoming killer truck. Strategies were thought out by Sri Lanka and New Zealand as both left out their best bowlers. But it didn't matter. Nothing did. As one of the former cricketers put it, the only thing that would ensure an Aussie loss in the tournament was food poisoning. And that didn't happen.
But what did was a gloomy end to many illustrious careers. The last of the overs in the finals being bowled in near-darkness was reminiscent of the effect the tournament had on the future of many a coach and player. Stephen Fleming, arguably the best captain of the tournament, had to relinquish captaincy after a decade of getting a second-rate team to consistently play better than it could. All arrangements seem to have been made to anoint Vettori captain, but would a change in leadership change the fortunes of a team? The same team, the same skill sets and a different captain - how different will the results turn out to be? That would be a question doing the rounds amongst other teams as well. Pakistan has turned to young Shoaib Malik who, in his fledgling career, has already seen it all - injury, chucking controversies, match-fixing and face-offs with the team management.
But one man deserved a better farewell. Brian Charles Lara. Talented, prodigal, mercurial - and past his best. For how long can a man be weighed down by a team that has been rebuilding ever since he could remember? He was ten years old when his team last won the World Cup and was 14 when the mighty Windies last reached the finals. Like Fleming, his moment of glory came through an ICC tournament - the 2004 Champions trophy when Courtney Browne and Ian Bradshaw brought home a match after it was almost lost. But unlike Fleming, Lara has hung up his boots, both as a player and captain, and now talks of dropping his daughter at school and picking her up, while the wise men from the selection committee will be picking and dropping lesser players from a list that has Sarwan pencilled in as captain.
Back home too, a lot has changed - Sachin has been endorsing Sunfeast and not Britannia, Dravid promotes Sansui and not Samsung and Sehwag has begun drinking Pepsi and not Coke. And yes, a stern wag of the index finger by the BCCI has set right most of the issues that plague the Indian cricket team. Senior players have been asked to sit out for an all-important series against Bangladesh. All those who spoke to the press have been asked for an explanation. The non-performers have been instructed not to take up too many endorsements. Most importantly, the man responsible for India's debacle, Greg Chappell, has been shown the door. One hears of an impending tour of England in July, when the Harmison and Simon Jones show is likely to be back on the road. If that happens, one can only commiserate with the team management - should we lose, they have one person less to blame it all on.
Chappell is not the only coach to have such a forgettable tenure in a foreign land. His counterpart across the border had to pay for his team's losses with his life. If this is the outcome of failure in this game, a lot has changed since the time we began following it. The numbers carelessly flung about are what make the game so scary. Telecast rights for a series - 800 crores. Losses because of India's exit - 2000 crores. Betting in an India-Pakistan match - well over a 1000 crores. How many organizations work round-the-clock, through the year to notch up a turnover that's half this amount? At this rate, World Cup 2011 could well cost twice as much as the recent edition. If so, what would be the price of failure?
In less volatile and less business-like conditions, other coaches are making silent exits, seeking fresh pastures. Dave Whatmore has called it quits with Bangladesh, Bennett King has resigned after the dismal performance of the West Indian team in the World Cup, Duncan Fletcher quit for the same reasons and was replaced in hours. Of course, the management guru amongst them, John Buchanan has planned his exit in much the same way as most Australian cricketers have done in recent times.
But the glorious exit of the century award goes to Glenn McGrath - can there ever be a better way to retire from the game? A 5-0 Ashes drubbing of England after a year away from the game. A World Cup win without a single hiccup along the way. The tournament's highest wicket-taker. The Man of the tournament in his last big tour. There are people who walk away into the sunset. And then there are those who stand still and let the sun slink away, blinded by their brilliance.
As players speculated over sunsets and gloom in their careers, one man rose like a phoenix and stood a good half metre outside his crease, waiting to tear apart anyone willing to bowl to him. After a year in the wilderness, Mathew Hayden entered the World Cup arena like a starved beast waiting for the shackled slaves to be thrown into its cage. The crowds were in no mood to relent and the Gods were in no mood to show mercy. Team after team capitulated as he ended his World Cup campaign with 659 runs in 10 innings. So strong was the Australian batting line-up that its bowlers – McGrath, Tait, Bracken and Clark - didn’t have to face a ball right through the world cup.
If World Cup 2011 has to be a well-contested and well-fought event, then the following will have to be done. Include a 17th team into the event, be it UAE or Namibia. Give away the World Cup to Australia during the opening ceremony and send them home. And then begin the matches with the remaining 16 teams. And fast-forwarding further, one hopes that the World Cup in 2015 remains true to the host nation theory which states that no host nation has ever won a World Cup - yet. Or would that be yet another worthless myth that Australia would explode?
Eight coaches, five captains, several senior players, including the world’s best batsman and the world’s best bowler – the World Cup 2007 ended up being the ultimate weapon of mass destruction, leaving behind long shadows and smoky ruins of teams that were once considered prospective winners. If there ever was a good time for cricket fans to look for an alternative game, it is now - unless their chant happens to be “Aussie, Aussie, Aussie, oy, oy, oy!”
It is always said that old men tend to live in the past. With four members aged 35 and above, and five others getting there shortly, the Australian team decided not to write a new script for the finals. Being in the era of remakes and all that, they just needed to go back to the archives and rehash an old blockbuster. The choice was between two classics - the 1999 World Cup finals where they bowl first, decimate the opposition for less than 150 and get those runs in 20 overs. And the 2003 World Cup finals, where they bat first and bludgeon the opposition into submission. While the world watched with bated breath as the coin was tossed and flipped over and over, little did they realize that Ricky Ponting was actually flipping between the two scripts. Heads for the 1999 formula and tails for the 2003 version. Tails it was and yawn, Gilchrist walked in, used a squash ball to smash the cricket ball all over the park and Australia walked out with the World Cup.
It was the third time in succession that Australia was winning the World Cup. It was the third successive World Cup where an Asian team reached the final. It was the third time that an Asian team was getting mauled at the big stage. There has to be a ban on such useless statistics - or a ban on Australia playing with 15 other mediocre teams, if one wants to save the future of the World Cup. In 1999, Australia felt threatened just twice as they lost to Pakistan and New Zealand, besides levelling with South Africa in an epic semi-final. In 2003, the disparity grew even worse as they remained unbeaten through the tournament. There were a couple of matches against Pakistan and New Zealand when they found themselves with their backs to the wall for a very brief moment, but that was it. In 2007, there wasn't even a semblance of a fight from any of the other teams as the world watched the most one-sided World Cup ever.
Before the start of the World Cup, Ponting had this point about excluding minnows from the big event as it led to a whole lot of unevenly contested matches. He couldn't have been more wrong. Ireland's matches against Pakistan and Zimbabwe, and Bangladesh's matches against South Africa and India were better fought than Australia's matches against any of its opponents. And so the 2007 edition ended with Australia featuring in the most number of one-sided matches it has played in – all 11 of them.
In one of the preview packages, Dean Jones was asked what Australia would have to do to beat England. "Just turn up," came the reply. That applied to all the teams that, without an exception, froze like deer caught in the headlights of an oncoming killer truck. Strategies were thought out by Sri Lanka and New Zealand as both left out their best bowlers. But it didn't matter. Nothing did. As one of the former cricketers put it, the only thing that would ensure an Aussie loss in the tournament was food poisoning. And that didn't happen.
But what did was a gloomy end to many illustrious careers. The last of the overs in the finals being bowled in near-darkness was reminiscent of the effect the tournament had on the future of many a coach and player. Stephen Fleming, arguably the best captain of the tournament, had to relinquish captaincy after a decade of getting a second-rate team to consistently play better than it could. All arrangements seem to have been made to anoint Vettori captain, but would a change in leadership change the fortunes of a team? The same team, the same skill sets and a different captain - how different will the results turn out to be? That would be a question doing the rounds amongst other teams as well. Pakistan has turned to young Shoaib Malik who, in his fledgling career, has already seen it all - injury, chucking controversies, match-fixing and face-offs with the team management.
But one man deserved a better farewell. Brian Charles Lara. Talented, prodigal, mercurial - and past his best. For how long can a man be weighed down by a team that has been rebuilding ever since he could remember? He was ten years old when his team last won the World Cup and was 14 when the mighty Windies last reached the finals. Like Fleming, his moment of glory came through an ICC tournament - the 2004 Champions trophy when Courtney Browne and Ian Bradshaw brought home a match after it was almost lost. But unlike Fleming, Lara has hung up his boots, both as a player and captain, and now talks of dropping his daughter at school and picking her up, while the wise men from the selection committee will be picking and dropping lesser players from a list that has Sarwan pencilled in as captain.
Back home too, a lot has changed - Sachin has been endorsing Sunfeast and not Britannia, Dravid promotes Sansui and not Samsung and Sehwag has begun drinking Pepsi and not Coke. And yes, a stern wag of the index finger by the BCCI has set right most of the issues that plague the Indian cricket team. Senior players have been asked to sit out for an all-important series against Bangladesh. All those who spoke to the press have been asked for an explanation. The non-performers have been instructed not to take up too many endorsements. Most importantly, the man responsible for India's debacle, Greg Chappell, has been shown the door. One hears of an impending tour of England in July, when the Harmison and Simon Jones show is likely to be back on the road. If that happens, one can only commiserate with the team management - should we lose, they have one person less to blame it all on.
Chappell is not the only coach to have such a forgettable tenure in a foreign land. His counterpart across the border had to pay for his team's losses with his life. If this is the outcome of failure in this game, a lot has changed since the time we began following it. The numbers carelessly flung about are what make the game so scary. Telecast rights for a series - 800 crores. Losses because of India's exit - 2000 crores. Betting in an India-Pakistan match - well over a 1000 crores. How many organizations work round-the-clock, through the year to notch up a turnover that's half this amount? At this rate, World Cup 2011 could well cost twice as much as the recent edition. If so, what would be the price of failure?
In less volatile and less business-like conditions, other coaches are making silent exits, seeking fresh pastures. Dave Whatmore has called it quits with Bangladesh, Bennett King has resigned after the dismal performance of the West Indian team in the World Cup, Duncan Fletcher quit for the same reasons and was replaced in hours. Of course, the management guru amongst them, John Buchanan has planned his exit in much the same way as most Australian cricketers have done in recent times.
But the glorious exit of the century award goes to Glenn McGrath - can there ever be a better way to retire from the game? A 5-0 Ashes drubbing of England after a year away from the game. A World Cup win without a single hiccup along the way. The tournament's highest wicket-taker. The Man of the tournament in his last big tour. There are people who walk away into the sunset. And then there are those who stand still and let the sun slink away, blinded by their brilliance.
As players speculated over sunsets and gloom in their careers, one man rose like a phoenix and stood a good half metre outside his crease, waiting to tear apart anyone willing to bowl to him. After a year in the wilderness, Mathew Hayden entered the World Cup arena like a starved beast waiting for the shackled slaves to be thrown into its cage. The crowds were in no mood to relent and the Gods were in no mood to show mercy. Team after team capitulated as he ended his World Cup campaign with 659 runs in 10 innings. So strong was the Australian batting line-up that its bowlers – McGrath, Tait, Bracken and Clark - didn’t have to face a ball right through the world cup.
If World Cup 2011 has to be a well-contested and well-fought event, then the following will have to be done. Include a 17th team into the event, be it UAE or Namibia. Give away the World Cup to Australia during the opening ceremony and send them home. And then begin the matches with the remaining 16 teams. And fast-forwarding further, one hopes that the World Cup in 2015 remains true to the host nation theory which states that no host nation has ever won a World Cup - yet. Or would that be yet another worthless myth that Australia would explode?
Eight coaches, five captains, several senior players, including the world’s best batsman and the world’s best bowler – the World Cup 2007 ended up being the ultimate weapon of mass destruction, leaving behind long shadows and smoky ruins of teams that were once considered prospective winners. If there ever was a good time for cricket fans to look for an alternative game, it is now - unless their chant happens to be “Aussie, Aussie, Aussie, oy, oy, oy!”
(Appeared in the New Indian Express Sunday Supplement on 06 May, 2007)
1 comment:
I cant believe this..that u r reading what i m gonna write...well the world is round 4 sure.I m sure many wud hv said...i dont mind sayin this again... I M CRAZY ABT U...SORY..WHAT U WRITE. Ur sense of timing, ur ideas,ur sattire, ur imagination...just AWESUM!! I luv 2 make u my GURU..Please just send a THANX if u hv read dis..atleast i'll knw dat u HAVE!!...Plz dont miss out even one Sunday in THe Express.Plzzzz
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