The Gods must be crazy

The cricketing Gods (I'm not referring to India's obsession with Sachin Tendulkar here) have just completely lost it. I think this is their way of getting back at cricket's administrators for ... well, a lot of reasons that we shall not get into here. But they are being just incredibly cruel! An India-Pakistan semi-final followed by a possible India-Sri Lanka final? (Ok, I know there could be 3 other possible outcomes but the one mentioned makes the following analogy perfect). That would be the equivalent of watching a show that features ghosts of John Lennon and George Harrison performing with Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr only to realize that it was only a cover for the real performers of the night - The Jonas Brothers featuring Justin Beiber!!! The mouth watering nature of the contest and the anticipation almost ensures that the other semi-final between Sri Lanka and - drum roll - New Zealand as well as the final will be almost completely eclipsed. 

Before we move on to the semi-finalists thought, it's worth mentioning a thing or two about the quarter finals. West Indies were steamrolled by Pakistan in a now-familiar fashion. Chris Gayle looked sufficiently disappointed but it is hard to tell whether that was because his team lost, or because he lost an opportunity to impress some IPL team-owner with a quick cameo in Indian conditions. Pakistan's spinners applied the squeeze and the Windies obliged by shrinking their bottoms so they could fit snugly in their grasp. England showed that not much has changed since 1996 by duly getting blasted out of the quarter-finals against the same opposition. Despite a century by Ricky Ponting, Australia scored almost exactly a 100 runs less than they did the last time the two teams met in a World Cup knockout. 260 was never going to be enough (regardless of what Ravi Shastri said) against the Indian batting lineup.  They chased down the total relatively comfortably, except for the time when Gambhir seemed in a hurry to get back to the dressing room to either rush to the toilet, or get out of some really ill-fitting underwear. Which brings us to the other game. There is no way to describe the game in normal cricketing terms. Which is why I'll try another approach. 

The South African team reminds you of the deer from the deer-in-the-headlights line. Imagine a fast, graceful dear that is generally regarded as amongst the best in it's class. It can seemingly outrun anyone and anything in sight. But there is a slight problem. The minute it sees headlights, something comes over it. The headlights needn't even be directly heading for it. It rushes towards the headlights in the nick of time to leave the truck no chance of getting out of the way. Now thinking of the New Zealand cricket team a truck is a bit like calling the Gieco lizard Godzilla, but I shall let it pass. On the day, both teams did exactly what was expected of them. New Zealand punched above their weight in the manner that has given them the title of honorary underdogs in any competition they enter, and the South Africans did more than just the regular choking. They unburied the grave after pretty much sealing New Zealand in, pulled them out of the coffin without them having to resort to any Uma Thurmanesque moves, handed them a particularly thick rope and lassoed their own heads in, while smiling benignly the entire way. That is the only way in which I can describe that quarter final. We all know that pressure can do funny things to people, but South Africa have officially taken the art of choking to hitherto unforseen highs (or lows - you can never be totally sure in these matters). 

The first semi final seems to be an open and shut case given just how the Sri Lankan spinners strangled the NZ run-chase when the two teams met in Mumbai during the league phase of the tournament. Again, Sri Lanka might end up making a complete mockery of the form-book by pulling off a South Africa, but imagining New Zealand in the final is a bit like visualizing Arjuna Ranatunga in a bikini. Just plain wrong and extremely disturbing. Before anyone tries to dwell on that image and causes serious damage to themselves, its time to talk about the final of all semi-finals: The India-Pakistan game. 

There is no point repeating cliches here that have already been digested by cricket fans the World over. Even Siddhu in his infinitesimal wisdom understands that this is a big game. What is not very well known is that given the obsession for the sport in the two countries, arrangements have been started to take the players of the losing team (and their families) to some remote location on the moon, where cricket is not the number 1 sport. The throwable-stones business (boxes of 25, 50 or 100) as well as the flammable-effigy business might also receive a shot in the arm in one of the two countries. Point being that the team that is the best likely to handle pressure on the day will win this match.

Sachin will be a talking point regardless of the opposition and rightly so. That Pakistan need him out of the way early is a given. However, Sehwag's ability to not carry any kind of baggage from 1947, or the previous delivery will stand him in good stead. Also, if he is able to get past the initial barrage from Shoaib Akhtar (hard to imagine him not playing) and Umar Gul, he will be a very good weapon against the Pakistani spinners who have been untested against really strong players of spin in the opposition so far. Yuvraj has been in great form but isn't the best players of spin around and that makes the likes of Gambhir extremely important to the middle. Let's hope he finds the right pair of underwear and takes a strong enough laxative before the match this time round. All the talk has centered on this being a match of the Pakistani bowlers against the Indian batsmen, but the Pak bowling attack is a far cry from the time when Wasim and Waqar opened the bowling. Also, despite the Indian bowling not looking great either, Zaheer is the obvious danger-man and Ashwin opening the bowling has given the attack a new dimension. Harbhajan Singh generally raises his game against Pakistan and their batsmen will need to find a way to attack him in the middle overs because Younis and Misbah have a tendency to really slow things down. You think Pakistan are missing someone like Anwar in the top order and someone like Inzy in the middle-order. If the Indian batting can negate the threat of Umar Gul and the batting power-play and manage to get a good score, its going to be hard for Pakistan to match India run-for-run. 

So after 42 inconsequential matches and 4 matches of the sudden-death variety, it's down to the last three games. These are the kind of games that professional cricketers dream about their entire lives. You could either rip your trousers while fielding at fine-leg and end up embarrassing yourselves in front of millions (the kind of embarrassment only Kamran Akmal is impervious to), or you could make yourself the toast of the nation. Along with huge dollops of butter. One thing is for sure though: after the India-Pakistan game, the final is bound to end up being the mother of all anti-climaxes. Miss that semi-final at your own peril!

Can the real World Cup please stand up?

After the 1992 World Cup, I had read an article by Rajdeep Sardesai where he imagined what the 2092 World Cup might look like. It included a final between the USA and UAE played at some exotic South American location, if memory serves me right. Sounds great, doesn't it? Unfortunately, it doesn't seem like it is going to happen. The reason being that cricket administrators, journalists, and other what not's seem to believe that the way to "spread the game" in non-cricket playing nations is not some TLC - wherein you build the system at the grassroots and carefully monitor the progress of the team until they are ready to face the big boys. Instead, they think the correct approach is to let the Associate nations play in a World Cup despite being absolutely outclassed by regular cricket-playing nations and then ignored for 4 years until it's time to play the next World Cup. It's like asking an amateur wrestler to build their bones (or in this case, break them) by fighting against the heavyweight champion so they can "learn". Somehow, it doesn't quite sound right. Although it isn't as bad as getting your bones broken (except for Sultan Zarawani who had his skull rearranged by an Allan Donald bouncer), consistently getting trashed must have some kind of an effect. Possibly even on Canada. 

Questions have been asked over and over about the format of this World Cup. What a lot of people don't quite know is that this was never intended to be a World Cup. It was always supposed to be a knockout tournament following on the heels of the 2000 ICC knockout that New Zealand won (which proves that it really was open). There was a debate in the ivory towers in Dubai about what the tournament must be named. They decided not to call it the knockout because that was supposed to be a secret. One of the names considered was "Who can win 3 in a row?" but it was quickly withdrawn when a few people confused it with a B-grade reality show and the ICC got applications from a group of circus jugglers, some boy bands and a troupe of bhangra dancers. It was thus decided that the best way to keep this secret was to call it the World Cup. To make it appear like the World Cup. To even play a bunch of games like any other World Cup. Except that they sneakily got in a format that had a quarter-final in it. 

And now, considering that everyone who anyone expected to be here is here, it's now time for the tournament to start in earnest. At this point, it really is a question of who can win 3 in a row. Let's try and review and analyse the matchups: 

QF1: West Indies v Pakistan: Everyone is obsessing about the possibility of an India-Pakistan game when both teams are still a match away. Pakistan have to fell the West Indies, which admittedly is a relatively easier task than the one facing India - beat Australia. Makes you think back to 1987 when nothing was in the way of an epic finale (except for Australia and England, of course). What happened? Both host nations were ousted only for an England-Australia final at the Eden gardens which Australia went on to win for their first ever World Cup title. West Indies have been beaten and bruised so far in this cup, but the point is that they are still in it. Both teams will know that it will take one inspired innings by Gayle and probably a good lively burst from the rapid Roach. Pakistan have been well, Pakistan. Afridi has been at his fiesty best as a bowler and a brainless chump with the bat and the same team that have beaten Australia to end their 34-match winning streak almost suffered embarrassment at the hands of Canada! They will be the first to admit that their batsmen have been solid at best, and Kamran Akmal has provided comedians all over the cricket-playing world with at least a year of material. All said, the West Indies suffer from a real lack of belief and it is hard to see Pakistan not being in the semi-finals. 

QF2: India v Australia: Tim Nielsen, who probably has won a lifetime contract as Australian coach (along with Ricky Ponting as captain) has already started the verbal jousting by claiming that all the pressure is on India and billing this contest as a mini-final. He's not totally wrong, of course. Except that it's a quarter-final and whichever team they end up facing will be happy that these teams will be mentally and emotionally drained by the time this match is through. India's top order have done exceptionally well, of course, and Sachin Tendulkar needs no reminder as to how important this match is. However, the middle-order has suffered a nervous breakdown in the tournament so far the minute the words power and play have been uttered in the same sentence. This is just as likely to be a battle between the Australian pace unit and the Indian top order, as between the Indian spinners and the Aussie middle-order (Ponting v Harbhajan, anyone?). The winners of that battle might well decide this contest, but it's just too close to pick a winner here. 

QF3: England v Sri Lanka: One reason that Sri Lanka would be relieved with the Indian win over WI the other night is that they get to play at home. And we all know how good they are in Sri Lanka. They might be a bit wary of England though since England are not the same England who Jayasuriya and Kalu obliterated in the last QF the two played against each other in 1996. England have shown distinct Pakistani traits in the first part of this World Cup by winning and losing (and tie-ing) when everyone least expected to. Their main falling though has been Anderson's absolute lack of form. Also, after the match against India, their batsmen (apart from Trott) have not been getting a lot of runs and it was only because the West Indies showed their mastery of the Collapse that England have actually gotten this far. Although Sri Lanka have been accused of being overly dependent on their top-order (and fairly so), they are in pretty good form and England don't seem to possess the kind of bowlers to trouble them. Also, it's hard to see the England batsmen put one past M&M, which makes picking this one rather easy: Sri Lanka all the way. 

QF4: South Africa v New Zealand: I'm going to stick my neck out here and say this: easy win for South Africa. Not only do South Africa look like a well-oiled machine, New Zealand have looked seriously out of their depth. But for some awful bowling at the death and Kamran Akmal proving why he is the butt of all jokes these days, despite Ijaz and Salman both being at-large in Pakistan, NZ might have not been able to put together a single win over a test-playing nation in the tournament so far. They were blown away by Australia and Sri Lanka and despite having McCullum and Taylor in the team, they just don't seem to have the necessary consistency to pose a serious threat. Also, South Africa seemingly have most bases covered except for possibly a power-hitter in the lower middle order, in the Klusener mould. It still seems likely that this one will be the kind of one-sided affair which might make people wonder whether the knockouts have even started. 

But we know that they have. You read it here. May the real World Cup begin!

The hieroglyphic DRS and the powerplay trojan horse

It has been a while since I last posted anything on this due to a variety of reasons (travelling and what not), but I'm pretty sure my 3 regular readers (all of which are close family and friends) will manage to go about their business without being too disappointed. And there have been way too many mismatches for the odd bright spot to balance out what has otherwise been a tepid tournament so far. The fact remains that the best 8 teams in the world play only 12 of the 42 matches in the league stages. Most of the games between the big teams so far have been pretty exciting, which makes me look forward to the leaner and meaner 10-team event of 2015 with hope. I'm also prone to agree with an Indian website that suggested that the ICC has hired England to make the weaker teams look good. England are the type of hunter that took on a particularly ferocious lion and slayed it, came out of hand-to-hand combat with a grizzly bear with it's pride intact but then took a rather bad beating from an adolescent cub and a domesticated zebra. I'll save the debate of how the weaker cricket nations can be helped to a future point. Also, all the matches have been analyzed to death so I won't repeat that here. There are a couple of very interesting things to have come out of this world cup so far: the UDRS and the batting powerplay.

Now a lot of people realize that the Duckworth-Lewis is something that most people who aren't mathematicians won't understand all too well. Most people think of that as Forrest Gump's mama's proverbial box of chocolates: you open it and just accept whatever is inside it. The UDRS, however, is a completely different animal. On the surface, it's motive is simple enough: To eliminate as many errors from cricket as possible. However, keeping things simple is something the ICC (and lawyers) have traditionally struggled with (along with many other things including but not limited to getting things right and showing common sense). I'm pretty confident in their ability to bungling things up to an extent that they can probably make eating a bowl of cereal seem inhumanly difficult. Something I just haven't been able to grapple with is this whole system of appeals and 2.5 meter distances.

Now consider this alternative: The umpire makes a decision. In the time that the bowler walks back to his mark, the captain adjusts the field so the short third-man is 3 inches more to his right than before, the batsman adjusts his crotch and the camera-man focuses on his newly found true love in the stands, the third umpire does what he is presumably there for - takes a look at the decision and either upholds it (in which case no one notices), or overrules it (which would, admittedly, make everyone take notice). Now I'm pretty sure Darryl Harper would find ways to get even that wrong - he is the type of person I would not trust with using a coffee machine without being a serious threat to himself and those around him - but all in all, it would result in reducing the number of absolute howlers. Apart from making the whole system easier to understand than the Theory of Relativity. And let's face it - cricket is inherently a stop and start sport. And complaining about the few extra few seconds that this could potentially add is like complaining about a few extra drops in the ocean. 

Secondly, the batting powerplay has thrown up an extremely interesting conundrum to all capains: when to take it? It is like a harmless looking Trojan horse that could end up housing an army of lethal soldiers who attack when you least expect it. Something that by conventional wisdom is an ally to the batting side has been anything but, on an average. Like Robin Jackman said on commentary during the India-SA match, it doesn't matter when you take it, you have to bat well in it. Batsmen who take it start acting like 16-year olds who are under immense pressure of "being cool" from their peers and end up sucking at the wrong end of their cigar resulting in long, fitful coughing while also burning their tongues and looking extremely foolish and positively uncool in the process. Maybe the trick is to not try and be cool, to not try and whack the cover off every ball, to not try and feel the pressure of hitting in the air all the time, but pressure can make you do funny things. I have a feeling it is decidedly easier for armchair critics like me to sit around and talk about it than actually using a batting PP well. But I may be wrong. The trick really is to keep a realistic target and not try and score 70 runs off every batting PP. Kamran Akmal, after all, cannot be the keeper in every match. 

This also brings up another point: the temerity of modern-day captains. If the great explorers of the past were anything like any of the captains seen so far during the tournament, we would have thought the world is still flat, the English would have eaten their food without spices and  ... well, you get the point. Zero sense of adventure. Why, after all, does it need a batting power-play for them to bring the field in and make the batsmen take some risks?Also, one boundary followed by three dot-balls is definitely better TV than four ambled singles in a row while the batsman, bowler and fielders are on auto-pilot. 

So as things proceed towards the knockouts, the only thing to see really is whether Bangladesh are able to sneak in at the expense of England, and what the actual matchups are going to be like. Now this might be a bit of an oversimplification, but I get the feeling that the team that ends up conquering the batting powerplay might be the one that has the best chance of winning the trophy.