Those who get the short shrift at the World Cup

Last week, Haroon Lorgat, the ICC Chief Executive, announced that the 2015 World Cup would feature 10 teams. This almost effectively means that Associates and Affiliate members have no chance of competing (or is it participating?) at the tournament, unless the ICC introduces a qualification tournament.

Around the time the 2007 tournament was still coming to terms with the early exit of India & Pakistan, I wrote that weaker teams should play in the tournament, but they should also get enough games against stronger opposition in the year leading up to the World Cup. I proposed a qualification round featuring the finalists from the ICC Trophy and the teams ranked #9-#11 in the ICC's ODI rankings. The top teams from a 10-game round-robin tournament make it to the main draw, which would now have a total of 10 teams.

There are lots of arguments for and against the inclusion of minnow sides. It is undeniable that these teams get thrashed pretty much all the time. Across all games played at the World Cup, ICC Champions Trophy (& its earlier avatars) and the T20 World Cup, 9 out of the top 10 thrashings (margin of defeat in terms of runs) have been handed out to minnow sides. Yet, #11 in the list is England's 200-run thrashing of India in the 1975 Cup opener.

The 10 lowest all-out totals have been made by minnow sides. Sri Lanka feature as the punching bag on quite a few occasions on both lists. They've not done badly over the past 25-30 years, have they? Admittedly, they do have a few more things going for them (compared to say Canada).

In my opinion, the minnow sides Cup can (and must?) actually be supported by one or more of the main teams. For e.g., Bermuda by West Indies; USA & Canada by Australia/New Zealand; Scotland, Ireland & Netherlands by England; Afghanistan (& Bangladesh to some extent) by India/Pakistan/Sri Lanka and Namibia, Kenya (& Zimbabwe) by South Africa. This should include the 'A' team playing home & away series against the minnow side's national and 2nd XIs as well as under-19 tours.

If the ICC can't get the individual boards to agree and implement a development programme for associate and affiliate members that makes sense, and helps them prepare to play at a good level, the ICC should just announce that this whole "Let's globalize cricket" idea was just a pile of nonsense. The minnow sides get the short shrift at pretty much every ICC event, and you feel genuinely sorry to see sides with talent who get blown away because of lack of opportunities.

I feel the same way when it comes to the Indian cricket fan who pays his way to watch cricket at stadiums. In general, cricket stadiums (or stadia?) in India tend to be massive 50,000+ capacity concrete structures with pathetic spectator facilities.

The bulk of the 50,000+ seats are allotted to corporates, sponsors, people in (or close to) power and affiliate clubs of the state association. This typically leaves around 10-20000 tickets for the general public, usually resulting in a mad rush and stampede when the ticket counter opens. On quite a few occasions, the purchasers of most of these tickets find that they've landed a lemon, because of a ticket scam.

All the stadiums that're hosting World Cup games have gone through significant renovations, primarily targeted at improving player facilities. From all reports, it seems like there have actually been on-ground improvements. Yet, the upgrades have come at a cost. To take just 3 examples, the Wankhede and Chepauk will seat 10% less while Eden Gardens will seat 25% less.

That decrease in capacity will quite likely not impact the hand-outs to sponsors, affiliate clubs and local bigwigs. The only ones who will get the short shrift are those who brave any sort of weather to queue up and buy tickets.

Labels: 2011, 2011 world cup, capacity, facilities, icc, minnows, stadiums

Thus spake Jagadish @ 12:35 AM | Sledge/Read 7 sledge(s) | Related posts
Did you like the post? [ Subscribe to the blog feed - | | Tweet ]

Predicting the 2011 World Cup semi-finalists

If the last couple of weeks were primarily around World Cup selections and omissions, the focus this week is on players being ruled out through injury (Mike Hussey, Nathan Hauritz, Eoin Morgan and Praveen Kumar).

A few others like Jacques Kallis, Stuart Broad, Graeme Swann, Paul Collingwood, Sachin Tendulkar, Virender Sehwag, Gautam Gambhir, Ricky Ponting and Shaun Tait are still out of action, and we'll definitely hear about more withdrawals over the next few days.

Moving on from injuries, can we use the period from after the 2007 World Cup to identify trends related to how various teams would perform?

I'm restricting the analysis to games involving only the top 9 teams. (Australia, Bangladesh, England, India, New Zealand, Pakistan, South Africa, Sri Lanka & West Indies). Where required, I filter out matches not played on the sub-continent. Although Pakistan isn't a host, having played there gives teams a half-decent idea of the conditions they can expect at other venues. One problem though is that West Indies has only played 3 ODIs in the sub-continent in the period, and one was rained out!

The parameters I consider are overall win-loss record, team stability (measured as # of matches / # of players), overall batting average, batting average for top order (#1-#4), middle order (#5-#7) & lower order (#8-#11), overall bowling average, wickets per match and overall bowling economy rate.

Here's how the rankings look across those parameters.

W/L record in the sub-continent: India, South Africa, Australia, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, England, New Zealand, Bangladesh & West Indies

Team stability (no sub-continent filter): India, Australia, New Zealand, Pakistan, Bangladesh, South Africa, West Indies, Sri Lanka & England

Overall batting average: Australia, South Africa, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, England, West Indies, Bangladesh & New Zealand

Top order batting average: South Africa, Australia, Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka, West Indies, England, Bangladesh & New Zealand

Middle order: Australia, India, Pakistan, England, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, New Zealand, West Indies & South Africa

Lower order: New Zealand, Sri Lanka, South Africa, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, England, Australia & West Indies

Bowling average: Sri Lanka, South Africa, New Zealand, England, Pakistan, Australia, India, Bangladesh & West Indies

Wickets per match: South Africa, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, England, Bangladesh, Australia, India, New Zealand & West Indies

Economy rate: New Zealand, Sri Lanka, South Africa, West Indies, England, Australia, Pakistan, Bangladesh & India

Assign ranks to each of the teams in the categories (e.g. for the sub-continent w/l record data, the ranks would be 1: India, 2: South Africa, 3: Australia, etc.). Add up the total ranks across all categories. The teams with the lowest 4 totals are the most likely to get to the semis based on the past trends.

Team	Total
Australia	35
Bangladesh	61
England	52
India	38
New Zealand	48
Pakistan	39
South Africa	29
Sri Lanka	35
West Indies	68

This indicates that the 4 semi-finalists would be South Africa, Australia, Sri Lanka & India with Pakistan also being in the reckoning. Sri Lanka & Australia are in group A while the South Africa & India are in group B. So at least it won't be an impossible situation.

A few things are very obvious from the individual parameter rankings: South Africa have had a fragile middle order. Australia's lower order batting has been weak & their bowling in the sub-continent hasn't been too great. Sri Lanka's bowling has done a great job so far. India's bowling has been downright pathetic. Pakistan are sort of average across all parameters and so suffer in comparison to teams who have good stats across 3-4 parameters & bad ones in the remaining parameters. New Zealand's tail end batting and bowling (econ rate) have been really good. England have trouble with their batting. Bangladesh gets saved by their middle & lower order pretty much each time.

Labels: 2011, 2011 world cup, prediction

Thus spake Jagadish @ 11:52 PM | Sledge/Read 9 sledge(s) | Related posts
Did you like the post? [ Subscribe to the blog feed - | | Tweet ]

World Cup - Surprise picks and omissions

Similar to India's 1 surprise pick & Sri Lanka's 2 surprise omissions in their 2011 World Cup squads, most other teams had at least one selection that was odd.

Australia picked Brett Lee and David Hussey, who hadn't played any internationals for nearly 1.5 years. With the tournament being played in the sub-continent, Australia picked 1.6 specialist spinners (Steve Smith bowls 6 overs per game on an average). Now that's a bizarre pick. Australia's part-time spin options are David Hussey (2 overs per game before he was picked in the squad) and Cameron White (2-3 overs per game when he had the skipper's trust and had not even bowled a single ball since August 2009). With 5 quicks & an all-rounder, clearly Australia are relying on pace to win. Seems like a gamble to me.

Despite investing nearly a year in Craig Kieswetter and Steve Davies, England went back to Matt Prior. Other than that, the squad seems reasonably balanced, with a couple of bits-and-pieces players in Luke Wright & James Tredwell.

Luke Woodcock is the unknown player in New Zealand's squad. He hadn't even played an ODI before he was picked. The squad seems weak on the batting though, and the opening slot hasn't yet been sorted out.

Pakistan didn't have any major surprises in the squad, but they did come up with one bolter. They didn't name a captain! That said, the batting definitely looks shaky with only Younis Khan & Misbah having the skills to do a good job with the middle overs. Only 2 specialist spinners were picked, which seems odd for a Pakistani side playing a World Cup in the sub-continent.

South Africa, by contrast, picked 3 specialist spinners, 2 of who are newbies. South Africa's problem is with #6, #7 and #8. Having dropped Boucher, who used to come in at #6 & #7 and salvage a crisis, they don't have too many experienced players to fill up those slots. The batting essentially ends after Duminy (typically at #5).

West Indies have picked just 5 bowlers (3 quicks & 2 spinners) and are obviously hoping that Dwayne Bravo will bowl his full spell and pick up wickets regularly.

The other omission was that of Eden Gardens. The ground won't host the India v England game & the match will now be played at Bangalore. But there seems to be some ambiguity around it. Kyazoonga, the official ticketing partner, doesn't list the India v England game. Does this mean backroom negotiations are still going on, and Eden Gardens will get the game?

Actually, the Cricket Association of Bengal, which is really the main agency to be blamed for the fiasco, should just relinquish its hosting rights for the other games at the ground, each of which is guaranteed to bring in crowds of at least 90000.

Labels: 2011, 2011 world cup, australia, england, new zealand, pakistan, south africa, squad, west indies, world cup, world cup squads

Thus spake Jagadish @ 1:54 AM | Sledge/Read 9 sledge(s) | Related posts
Did you like the post? [ Subscribe to the blog feed - | | Tweet ]