|
|
|
| |
 |
Views
|
 |
|
| |
|
|
|
Get the calculators out. Sharpen the pencils. Put on the thinking caps
- it is statistics time.
Come any major tournament involving, pools,
groups and divisions, the one involving India remain the perennially
volatile one, where a win here and a loss there causes upward swings
and downside turns, more unpredictable than an international bourse
right after some breaking news. It usually gets to the situation, where
not only has India have to win at any cost, setting aside the mandatory
margins and the requisite run rates it has to achieve, the other teams
have to undergo similar trials and tribulations for no fault of theirs,
but for the bad stroke of luck of sharing the same berth space with
India, during that leg of the journey.
Usually this commotion is
reserved to the later stages in the tournaments, on the roads that lead
to the semi-finals or the finals, and it quite rare to see India
scampering for the statistics sheets this early into the season. What
happened at the end of the game between India and Bangladesh can be
described as a statistician's nightmare at best. It opened up the
Pandora's box of the plethora of possibilities involving the
permutations and combinations of 4 teams and 6 match-ups, with a
multitude of results that can pull down a winning team or prop up a
mediocre but a lucky one. Add to that, the rains, the ties,
Duckworth-Lewis, Murphy's law, net run rates and many such trivial but
potentially explosive parts, and Shakespeare smiles wistfully quoting
"All the World is a stage", little realizing how statement rings true,
if it had the word "Cup" next to 'World'.
Sri Lanka kept their end of the bargain by trouncing Bermuda by quite a
huge margin, expecting India would mete out similar treatment to
Bangladesh, so that things would go as planned and the tie between them
two teams become a meaningless exercise of record keeping. Now with the
result going against India, the entire group has been thrown into a
tizzy with every team (except, probably, Bermuda), having to play every
game in their group as though it is their last, and still wait for the
rest of the encounters involving other teams, for a clear picture to
emerge. Instead of being an automatic shoo-in for the 'top-rated' teams
to make it to the next leg, letting the minnows get some play-time with
the 'biggies', this startling loss allowed Bangladesh to fancy their
chances of making it to the next level at the cost of their Big
Brother, and God forbid, its little island neighbor.
Even if Sri Lanka manages to win over Bangladesh, it does not
automatically guarantee the ticket to the Super 8, should it lose
against India. If Bangladesh wins over Bermuda and India wins
convincingly over Bermuda and Sri Lanka, that would leave a three way
tie with 2 wins each for each team ending up in a photo finish, waiting
for the men upstairs with calculators to flash the final winners on the
electronic boards. Or the equation would become less complication,
should India loose to Sri Lanka, and just bow out of the tournament
allowing teams that played better on their days to move on to the next
round. As history would have it, almost every World Cup threw its doors
open to a break-out team that seems to have come from nowhere to
capture the imaginations, headlines and the spotlight in the cricketing
fraternity. In 1987 it was Zimbabwe, in '92 it was New Zealand, '96 saw
Sri Lanka and in '03 it was Kenya. With a disciplined performance and
intelligent use of their limited resources, these break-out teams upset
the predictability patterns, even it is just for a single day, earning
the respect, honor and sometimes even the much deserved reverence that
they have valiantly strove and gallantly fought for, amongst its peers.
The one-off upset victories that Bangladesh has been pulling out the
hat for quite sometime in the recent past against the formidable
oppositions, has culminated with this fantastic win against the
Indians, which should see them, not only to the next level in this
tournament, but also push them into the proverbial big leagues.
Nothing went right for Pakistan right from the start, or even before
that - the preparations, the selections, the warm-ups, and the ones
that really mattered - their match-ups. Post 1992, Pakistan has looked
for and hunted down reasons to implode during World Cup campaigns and
this time it was undone by the doping controversy. Leaving far behind
their traditional forte, the bowling, Pakistan tried to emulate India
by stock-piling in the batting department, and after two successive
misfires, they find themselves in a position they have never been
before - being the first ones ousted from the tournament, barely 5 days
after the curtains have risen. Even when defending modest totals,
Pakistan had always fallen back on the chief weapon in its quiver, the
blinding pacemen, and this time the absence of those has made all the
difference, quite literally. Though it is a little unfair to lay the
blame on the non-participating members of the team, Akhtar and Asif
should also share a part of the blame for the disastrous 5 days. When
history books are finally drawn up, Akhtar, whose run-ins with the
legal side of the game are as famous as his run-ups, is going to be
best remembered for all the things that he did outside the cricketing
field than for what he did in the middle of the same. Continuing the
age-old Pakistani tradition of sacrificing an icon at the World Cup
altar (1996-Wasim and Miandad, 2003-Waqar), Inzamam finds himself in an
exactly opposite position now, to where he was, when he was first
introduced to the world in the successful campaign of 1992.
In the past 6-8 months leading up to the World Cup, he has prepared the
cricketing world well of his plans of retirement after the Cup with a
string of sub-standard scores, a dismal form that he continued even
through the tournament. Not many can choose their exits; and as the
sight of the defeated Miandad, the greatest batsman that Pakistan has
ever produced, standing alone trying to hold the fort, as the rest of
this mates keep with the parade charade, during his last match at
Bangalore in 1996 World Cup against India, would have it, even the best
of them have no option but to face the worst of times. History would
look upon Inzamam more favorably as the gentle genial troubled giant,
who had both the great fortune of being associated with the best and
learning from them (like Imran, Miandad, Wasim and Waqar), and the
great misfortune of sheperding the herd through the darkest days of
Pakistani cricket, and worse, has no worthy successors to pass the
baton and the wealth of his knowledge and experience on to. He could at
least take come comfort in the sad fact that this remains the lowest
point in Pakistani cricket and it could only go, but, up from here with
fresh minds, fresh ideas, fresh legs and new beginnings.
Finally, ICC shot itself in its foot, purely from the advertising
revenue standpoint, as it finds both Pakistan and, in all probability,
India out of the tournament barely before it has even begun, by
introducing the element of chaos, on its own volition, to thrown up
unexpected results. Though it is not to take away the spirited efforts
of Ireland and Bangladesh, the results do not do much to their causes
of being recognized as formidable forces in international arenas. All
that it created was more drama, and ICC would not have wanted any drama
during the initial stages, particularly involving India and Pakistan,
their largest money spinners in the advertising coffers. As the twin
towers fell at just about the same time, reminding of the 87 campaign
when both these teams were eliminated with a day apart during the
important leg of the contest, nobody meant this when it was declared
that this World Cup is wide open for one and all and that any one can
become a champion, on their day. Surely, as wished for, the tables have turned.
|
|
|
|
|
More Views by Srinivas Kanchibhotla
