So the big day dawns tomorrow – start of a the longest World Cup so far – 54 games, 16 teams and perhaps the closest tournament in the 30 year history of the game. All of which makes it difficult for someone as lazy as yours truly to do any justice to the tournament while attempting a curtain raiser. But one shall try anyhow.

Now the World Cup is held only once in 4 years. So the ICC, which is the International Cricket Council (and not the International Council of Crooks, as deposed umpire Darell Hair would like to call them) likes to maximize the action as much as possible and has theorized that it needs to spread cricket far and wide. That sounds very logical, except that in the past 10 years, the second string international teams have seemed to be very undercooked when they face the top teams, barring an odd game or two.

In the run-up to the 1999 edition of the World Cup, Krishnamachari Srikkanth (thanks to Karthik for this amazing find) compared the ICC to his grandmother who always forced him to include his kid brother in their street cricket games, when his brother was no taller than a cricket bat. Two World Cups thence, that comparison is perhaps valid even now.

The nonsensical groupings also ensure that the chances of a Cinderella team reaching the semi final or the final is next to impossible. Of the four teams in each group, the top two teams go through the Super 8 stage. And since the groups have been formed with two top teams in each group, it is obvious that a team like Bermuda or Ireland must win all its three group games to have a realistic chance of getting through to the next round.

While, one cannot discount this (for stranger things have happened before in cricket), such a turn of events is highly impossible. To put things in perspective, such a situation is as improbable as the current Celtics reaching the NBA finals and subjecting a team like the Mavericks or the Suns to a 4-0 whitewash. So one can safely assume that the top eight teams of this World Cup shall be (in no particular order) – India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, West Indies, Australia, England, South Africa and New Zealand.

But the tournament after that is close as it can be. Until a month or so ago, there was only one clear favourites, the team that was on its way toward a three peat – Australia. In fact the last ten years since the 1996 world cup in the sub continent, there were two distinct groups in cricket – Australia and the Rest. But parity has been restored in the past month or so. Five successive defeats have pulled down Australia from the stratospheric heights that it once occupied.

So it is very difficult to predict which of the eight will make the semi finals. If one was to do his best, then maybe a five way grouping can be arrived at. Of the eight teams, the weakest seem to be Pakistan and the West Indies and England. Pakistan would have been a prime contender if not for the “injuries” to its bowling spearheads and injuries to some other players. The West Indies has been on a steady downward spiral in the last 10 years and though every game it is technically on home soil, some of the grounds are new and so they would be as alien to them as to the rest. As for England, in spite of the presence of players like Andrew Flintoff and Kevin Petersen, they are an uninteresting lot. Some of its squad and coming off major injuries and lack match practice. So I won’t count on them making the semi finals.

That leaves us with five teams – India, Sri Lanka, Australia, South Africa and New Zealand. One first sight, choosing the semi-finalists from this set seems be a hard task. However, it is worth a fair try and personally speaking, I am rooting for India, Sri Lanka and Australia to make the semis. The last team shall be one of these two – New Zealand and South Africa.

Tomorrow we shall see how the semi finalists measure up… Until then, adios.

Oh wait, before I leave, the answer for the question on my previous post – Russell Crowe. That picture was from the cricket match he organized the day before his wedding between a Crowe family XI against the guests. However it is not known if Martin and Jeff Crowe, former cricketers from New Zealand (who happen to be his cousins) played for the family XI.

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