Who will get this Cup of a billion dreams?
India wants it for Sachin Tendulkar; South Africa for ‘Madiba’ Nelson Mandela and, of course, to get over its infamous jinx; England wants to get equal with football and tennis back home; Pakistan wants it to somehow, anyhow bring some kind of stability into its inherent nutcase environment; Sri Lanka for a 1996 hometime encore; and, Australia for stitching back the pride it has lost in these four years.
We are not sure if West Indies really want or desire anything that could get them into a tizzy, so delightfully laidback they are. And the minnows, well, they are there for those flash in the pan glories which the bigwigs, the sponsors, the telecast barons and everyone else out to make big money from all the hype and hoopla around the World Cup would dread the most.
The disaster that struck the 2007 Caribbean edition after a feisty Bangladesh threw out paper powerhouse India at the mouth of the tournament is still raw for everyone who suffered. (I, for one, was doomed to follow from then on non-performing Bangladesh for the entire tournament!) Hence, the change in format, making it near impossible for big teams to not go through to at least the knockout stage. Play three minnows well and have a fair chance for quarterfinals, get one biggie additionally and be a sureshot bigwig yourself.
Nothing could get simpler than that but cricket is quite an arithmetic baiter and that’s what keeps all hopes as afloat as all fears, which, in turn, is a unique recipe which shares delectability with doom in equal measure, a situation that lends life to cricket.
For what it’s worth, as we near the big-day World Cup opener between India and Bangladesh, the final outcome for teams seems to be falling in place. After a crippling year which picked on everything from confidence to team cohesion, the Australian squad has finally announced its intentions of keeping the tag of perennial champions very much alive and kicking: They just chased down a score of 333 with four balls to spare, making England look as bewildered as an English fox would in the Australian outback. This despite Ricky Ponting not being there and the yellow shirts having a harrowing pride breaking Ashes defeat at home! This would mean they will most likely top their group (A) and if India needs to not meet them in the quarters, they need to be on top of their group (B) as well — because the format says it will be A1 vs B4 in the first match of the knockout stage.
But all this and much more would shape up only after the Indians defeat the Bangladeshis on February 19 at Dhaka, a city which has not much news coming out of its unvisited boundaries other than the clean-up package the city’s mayor has offered the beggars to keep international embarrassment at bay for a nation which has been disturbingly synonymous to poverty and cyclonic deaths.
The salaried beggars’ story also tells you how typically subcontinental this World Cup will be. It reminds us about the things we did to keep Delhi clean, safe and, of course, a fortress where nothing moved except police boots for 15 days! The floating population from Bihar and other places got a free ride, all expenses paid for a month trip home, the beggars were taken away to an unknown, but apparently well-provided, destination and the pickpockets, etc were told (unofficially of course) to resume business only after the Games. The good thing then was India performed, there was a desi flavour to victories in all sorts of unheard of sporting areas and the public got its bagful of gaming moments.
Back in the Cricket World Cup, we have everything largely in place for the Men in Blue — only we want a 1983 type of explosive recall in the middle. Dhoni’s job is cut out very clearly — we need just seven matches to hold the Sachin ke liye Cup up in Indian hands — and the next few decades will be taken care of! Surely, winning seven out of a total of 49 matches that the World Cup has scheduled is not too much to ask, hope for, demand or intensely desire.
In that context, skipper Dhoni’s recent utterances are pregnant with possibilities both good and bad. He said recently that India are no longer underdogs. Fact is, the only time India won the World Cup was when it was nothing but a thoroughbred underdog in 1983 which had no strength to stand against even a team like Zimbabwe but it did — not just against the Harareans but also against the then cricketing padshahs, the West Indies.
Source: Sunday Pioneer, February 6, 2011
We are not sure if West Indies really want or desire anything that could get them into a tizzy, so delightfully laidback they are. And the minnows, well, they are there for those flash in the pan glories which the bigwigs, the sponsors, the telecast barons and everyone else out to make big money from all the hype and hoopla around the World Cup would dread the most.
The disaster that struck the 2007 Caribbean edition after a feisty Bangladesh threw out paper powerhouse India at the mouth of the tournament is still raw for everyone who suffered. (I, for one, was doomed to follow from then on non-performing Bangladesh for the entire tournament!) Hence, the change in format, making it near impossible for big teams to not go through to at least the knockout stage. Play three minnows well and have a fair chance for quarterfinals, get one biggie additionally and be a sureshot bigwig yourself.
Nothing could get simpler than that but cricket is quite an arithmetic baiter and that’s what keeps all hopes as afloat as all fears, which, in turn, is a unique recipe which shares delectability with doom in equal measure, a situation that lends life to cricket.
For what it’s worth, as we near the big-day World Cup opener between India and Bangladesh, the final outcome for teams seems to be falling in place. After a crippling year which picked on everything from confidence to team cohesion, the Australian squad has finally announced its intentions of keeping the tag of perennial champions very much alive and kicking: They just chased down a score of 333 with four balls to spare, making England look as bewildered as an English fox would in the Australian outback. This despite Ricky Ponting not being there and the yellow shirts having a harrowing pride breaking Ashes defeat at home! This would mean they will most likely top their group (A) and if India needs to not meet them in the quarters, they need to be on top of their group (B) as well — because the format says it will be A1 vs B4 in the first match of the knockout stage.
But all this and much more would shape up only after the Indians defeat the Bangladeshis on February 19 at Dhaka, a city which has not much news coming out of its unvisited boundaries other than the clean-up package the city’s mayor has offered the beggars to keep international embarrassment at bay for a nation which has been disturbingly synonymous to poverty and cyclonic deaths.
The salaried beggars’ story also tells you how typically subcontinental this World Cup will be. It reminds us about the things we did to keep Delhi clean, safe and, of course, a fortress where nothing moved except police boots for 15 days! The floating population from Bihar and other places got a free ride, all expenses paid for a month trip home, the beggars were taken away to an unknown, but apparently well-provided, destination and the pickpockets, etc were told (unofficially of course) to resume business only after the Games. The good thing then was India performed, there was a desi flavour to victories in all sorts of unheard of sporting areas and the public got its bagful of gaming moments.
Back in the Cricket World Cup, we have everything largely in place for the Men in Blue — only we want a 1983 type of explosive recall in the middle. Dhoni’s job is cut out very clearly — we need just seven matches to hold the Sachin ke liye Cup up in Indian hands — and the next few decades will be taken care of! Surely, winning seven out of a total of 49 matches that the World Cup has scheduled is not too much to ask, hope for, demand or intensely desire.
In that context, skipper Dhoni’s recent utterances are pregnant with possibilities both good and bad. He said recently that India are no longer underdogs. Fact is, the only time India won the World Cup was when it was nothing but a thoroughbred underdog in 1983 which had no strength to stand against even a team like Zimbabwe but it did — not just against the Harareans but also against the then cricketing padshahs, the West Indies.
Source: Sunday Pioneer, February 6, 2011
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