The world cup is just hours away. So what is the blogosphere and internet in general talking?

House of Honcho has a nice world cup preview.

If I had to get off the fence, Aus would be my pick to win, but at $3.20 on Betfair no thank you. I expect the South Africans to somehow stuff it up again, and if I didn’t have to take conditions into account, Sri Lanka is in my mind the main danger. India will leak too many runs in the field, and the remaining four teams who are all paying over $10 are a little over-priced as despite question marks over their consistency, all they have to do is win enough games to qualify for the semis and then win 2 games on the trot. Any of the eight sides can do that.

Vishnu on the other hand asks us not to forget the minnows, considering the past record. Given the number of matches minnows play this time, a few upsets are very much probable.

An astrologer thinks that India will play in the final.

Kalyan is clear regarding his expectations from the world cup and he explains them with strong reason:

I think if the team plays at it best and gets beaten by a better team (ala WC’03) and not panic (ala WC’96) - i would be smiling at the end of the WC campaign - WC in hand or not!

The world cup is being held in the West Indies but you would think it is being held in India if you look at the hype. A world cup road show is being held by google across India. Google also has the world cup venues in google earth.

As a cricket fan, I am hoping that the West Indies reach at least the semis and the world cup heralds a new era for them. I do think that they have the team to be able to reach the semis as well if they play to their potential. Rahul Bhattacharya says it best - rally round the West Indies.

I was thinking that Pakistan has a very good chance this year –good bowlers, very good batsmen, good depth in the XI, Bob Woolmer and a track record of doing quite well in the world cups in recent times if they do not run into India. However, this was before Asif and Akhtar found themselves out of the tournament.

Coming to the actual tournament, round 1 matches versus the minnows are very much like the warm up matches which precede them. Given that the world cup will carry on for nearly 2 months and we will see a marathon of matches, the semi finalists will in all likelihood be those who deserve their spot. My semi finalists, in order - Australia, South Africa, India and West Indies.

Semi-finals –

Australia over West Indies;
South Africa over India

Finals –

Australia over South Africa.

Given the unpredictability of the one day game, the cliché – ‘any of the top 8 teams can reach the semis is very true.

It will be an unprecedented and a huge accomplishment, even by Australian standards, if they do manage to win the world cup for a third consecutive time. The West Indies couldn’t do it in 1983 when they were thwarted by India the current era where one day cricket is more understood by the teams compared to the 70s and 80s, and the game is more competitive on the whole, it would be a much bigger achievement.

Where individuals are concerned, I am looking at Nathan Bracken and Sourav Ganguly to have huge world cups. Bracken has been nothing short of exceptional for Australia in the last few seasons. However, 2007 has been below par for him and he will look to reverse that. Ganguly, on the other hand, has had a tough last couple of years for various reasons. With the 2007 world cup, in all likelihood to be his last, he will look to go out gloriously.

However, given out of the blue performers in the world cup, be it teams (India in ‘83, Pakistan in ‘92, Sri Lanka in ‘96) or players (Gary Gilmour, Geoff Allott), I am not very sure how any prediction can be made with a lot of conviction. So take the above predictions with spoonfulls of salt.

Now, who do you think will win the world cup?

Picture taken by Smither Jones.

Ramesh Powar is a glaring omission from the Indian world cup squad. His stats in his international career so far:

Year M-Wkts-Avg-Eco
2004 2-0-undefined-5.20
2006 14-19-27.15-4.50
2007 2-5-19.00-4.75

So, what has he done wrong?

Kumble has been selected for his experience and that, despite his not that impressive record of late, is understandable. However, there is little logic in selecting 5 fast bowlers. Selecting 3 spinners would have been the right way to go about it.

Even if we play 3 fast bowlers in the XI, why do we need more than 1 reserve fast bowler? Selecting two spinners in the XI on a slower Windies pitch cannot be ruled out. Given that, I would have selected a reserve spinner instead of two reserve fast bowlers.

Sreesanth, for all his promise, has been too expensive (economy rate of 5.75) and I would have gone for Powar instead.

Four bowlers is some thing the Indian management might be consdering or might do well to consider. Just a couple of days ago, Chappell mentioned that Tendulkar should bowl more. Ganguly, Sehwag and Tendulkar can definitely fill in 10 overs. We didn’t do too badly in World Cup 2003 playing 7 batsmen.

Another aspect is that when we play Powar, he might add some thing to do tail batting but it would be just that and not much more. He is not some one who is that strong with the bat to rely upon that much. His List A batting average is 18 or some thing after 75 plus matches - not that great.

So, playing 5 bowlers with Pathan and Powar filling in the role of the extra batsman is not a very reliable option. I would go in with 4 bowlers myself even if we do not have Sehwag (he shouldn’t be selected just because he can bowl) with Tendulkar and Ganguly filling in the 5th bowler’s role and Yuvraj Singh bowling where necessary.

Sehwag, Pathan were poor but weren’t dropped till very late and after Pathan was brought back, we might bring back Sehwag as well. The selection committee under More had erred while picking the teams. Indian preparation for the world cup has been left till too late.. We have to resort to try out Uthappa right now and even if he has a few good innings and a few bad ones, we cannot assess his reliability as we would like. Then there is Gambhir of course.

That many players were pretty poor in the last 18 months holds little weight because the team management and selectors were pretty rigid regarding specific players (Ganguly comes to mind instantly as does Kumble) when they should have tried the players who had been too good to ignore in the past or who looked promising enough. Australia rested a few players for the Champions Trophy for instance to get their team right as they approached the world cup.

Now, we have this situation where two players - Pathan is being tried again and Sehwag might be played as well just because we do not know how x y z players are because there isn’t much time to give x y z players a proper run. The Indian selection policies over the past 18 months or so have been a joke. I am blaming the Kiran More lead committee and not the Vengsarkar lead committee here.

The Vengsarkar lead selection committee are fixing the damage as much as possible and have done a good job of it. They brought back players, have tried people (even Jaffer in South Africa was at least an attempt to get things right). Some things have clicked while others haven’t and that is fair enough. What isn’t fair though is that crucial world cup spots like who will open will be decided based on what pans out in the next four games versus Sri Lanka.

It is an emotional roller coaster the youngsters particularly could have done well to do without because such shorter runs harm more than build players. That the moves of the new selection committee seem to be working is a very good sign though and augurs well for India for the world cup. It is a circus Indian cricket would have done well to avoid.

Fans throng Lords after India’s 1983 world cup win.

Indian cricket had a fair bit of success even before the 1983 world cup. India won consecutive test tours in West Indies and England and the Indian team was greeted with streets full of people when Wadekar’s team returned unlikely heroes in 1971. Even before, Indian cricket occupied national consciousness. CK Nayudu was a hero and his aggressive attractive style drew crowds. In fact Dungarpur, who claims to have watched every Indian test cricketer, claims there was no one like CK, not even Tendulkar came close in attracting people into the stadiums. While that maybe an exaggeration, it embodies how cricket was always in the national realm, though so was hockey with varying popularity for the two sports.

1983 shot up cricket’s popularity in India like nothing else has ever done in history. India, a nation which was coming to terms with the modern world, could hold it’s head high and the common Indian on the street could feel proud to be an Indian. Heroes and great sporting achievements tend to do that to developing nations. The West Indians will tell you how their great cricket team of the 70s and 80s filled them with so much pride for instance. In India, every one started following cricket and even modern day stars who hadn’t taken up cricket that seriously started looking at the sport differently. Tendulkar for example, a die hard McEnroe fan and as much interested in tennis as cricket till that point, says 83 was the turning point for him when he took to pursuing cricket seriously.

1983 victory also brought the 1987 world cup hosting to India (and Pakistan) which fuelled further growth of cricket in the country. Then, of course, there was the 1996 world cup and onwards when one day cricket became a big cash cow. Would all this have really happened had India not won in 1983? Maybe but it could well have been delayed 20 years or so. If we look at it from the financial perspective, from the perspective of the fans, players or Indian cricket history at large, nothing compares to 1983 and in all likelihood, nothing ever will. The impact has been multi-ferrous and that powerful.

Ryan Patrick live blogs the press conference which announces Brian Lara as West Indian cricket captain for the third time. The general feeling is that this is a bad decision, a terrible backward step. When Lara was appointed captain the second time, the general feeling was that it was a very good decision. Public opinion, as we know, is fickle.

The West Indies are struggling at the moment. So they certainly cannot become worse with Lara now, can they? Brian Lara has the experience. Brian Lara has been inspirational and proven in parts like in helping the Windies win the Champions Trophy in 2004. So why can Brian Lara not be a stop gap arrangement till the World Cup at least and help the Windies to some proud victories?

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Cricinfo’s Osman Samiuddin reports:

Shahid Afridi has announced his `retirement’ from Test cricket. In an announcement that caught most people in Pakistan by complete surprise, Afridi told a local TV channel that he was planning to concentrate only on ODI cricket to ready himself for the World Cup in 2007.

This has the cricket fans perplexed. Shahid Afridi is just 26 years old. He has been superb for Pakistan in both one dayers and tests of late. A case in point - in his last 10 tests, Shahid Afridi has scored 854 runs at an average of 47.44 with 3 hundreds. He has also taken 23 wickets at an average of 33.60. This, after being left in the wilderness for long from the Pakistan national cricket team. You would imagine that Afridi would want to play as much international cricket as he possibly could.

So every one is describing the decision of Shahid Afridi to retire as crazy, shocking, bewildering and every thing in between. I see it slightly differently. Confirmed tests Pakistan play between now and the World Cup are 4 in England and at least 3 in South Africa apart from the home tests versus the West Indies. England and South Africa have pitches which are in sharp contrast to the pitches the sub-continent has. Afridi is absolutely king on flat wickets where the ball is not moving, bouncing and playing cross batted shots is not as easy. But would only this make Afridi sit out?

You have to consider the second important aspect. To defeat England in England, or at least compete, you need solid specialist cricketers. Would an Afridi be preferred over a solid batsman in England? In most likelihood ‘no’. Would the playing XI be stronger by chosing a specialist or an Afridi (whose batting or spin wouldn’t be as effective in England or South Africa)? If there was any one except a Woolmer at the helm, I would be less certain regarding Afridi not playing in England given his recent track record. However, Woolmer is a superb strategist. Woolmer is the real reason Afridi and Akhtar were used so well by Pakistan in the recent past. Woolmer is a key reason why Pakistan is doing so well of late. But that’s another story.

Now Woolmer was instrumental in bringing Afridi back to the Pakistan side. So I would be surprised if Afridi didn’t consult Woolmer before announcing his decision. Even if he didn’t, Afridi had one of two paths to chose from here:

1. Play in the test team and risk being in and out of the side and lose the place by the end of the South African tour - a very real possibility.
2. The path Afridi chose to go with.

Another aspect to consider - in the crazy world of Pakistan cricket, no one is certain of any spot. So a Rameez Raja, a Javed Miandad or any one else can come and go from top level management. A Woolmer (who used Afridi very well in the Pakistan side) may not be there after World Cup 2007. He is contracted till 2007 as things stand.

By announcing his retirement now, Afridi almost certainly ensures himself a return to test cricket as soon as he announces that he is reversing his decision to retire after the 2007 World Cup. Heck, if Michael Jordan can do it, what is Afridi! Loads of people have retired before and made comebacks.

The World Cup will be played in the West Indies - tracks which are usually flat. To support a successful World Cup (sadly runs is supposed to be excitment in cricket nowadays) flat wickets are a given. So Afridi has a good chance of having a decent World Cup 2007 individually.

Afridi is just 26. I will be much more surprised if he doesn’t play another test match in his life than any one who is surprised at him announcing his retirement from tests right now.