Champions' Trophy has turned out to be an absolute cracker of a tournament. Australia were the hot favourites and South Africa were close second. India and Sri Lanka were considered to be the next in line considering their familiarity with the conditions. Pakistan, New Zealand, England and West Indies were given the least chances in that order!
England alone has stood upto the honour reluctantly though! Every other top favourite has failed. South Africa, as always, are bad losers. They have begun complaining about the pitch after they failed to negotiate the off-spin of one Mr. Patel - a third rung spinner of the New Zealand side. The gap between the bat and pad was like as if I could have driven my pulsar through it. Why don't they learn to gracefully accept that they lost to a good team? Useless buggers.
I am digressing. This Champions Trophy is interestingly poised. With everyone in with a chance of making it to the semi-finals. It would have been really boring if Australia had a winning streak and they beat some flash-in-the-pan finalist. As of today, Australia - theoretically - has the second least chances of making it to the next stage. But we know the Aussie mindset. They will rock back like no one else can.
Pakistan has a cricket board without a chairman. The same fate awaited their captaincy too. Two of their main bowlers went home for 'doping' (a largely unheard of event in cricket and only the Great Shane Warne has done it once before the World Cup). The present captain had once refused to take up captaincy. They were literally down in the dumps. But then, nobody (not one cricket observer) wrote them off. Pakistan is know to rise like a Phoenix and they did it. Stopping the Sri Lankan lions in the midst of their winning streak!
And on the other side, there was this West Indian team whose fortunes seem to be linked to the BSE Sensex. Just a couple of days back they were playing the qualifiers to qualify for the tournament. And a couple of months back they had beaten the World's #2 ODI team India 4-1 in a 5 match series at home. A day before they were all our for a total score of 80 or something, their lowest ever against Sri Lanka. And here they beat Australia with ease! [I have a feeling Australia will drop Micheal Clarke for their next match against traditional rivals England. His run-out of Gilchrist was the turning point for me]
How much more unpreditable can this game get? As an ardent cricket follower, I love this kind of tournaments where everyone is doing their best and even the best is challenged at the job they do the best. It didn't start off with so much promise though.
Today's match of NZ v/s SL is going to be damn interesting. It would be even more interesting if SL can pull it off against NZ. If SL loses this match, they are (more or less) out of the tournament. So, it's a do-or-die for them. The Sri Lankans are good players of spin. All these Patels and Vettoris (I know I cannot write him off like that, but then I feel he cannot battle the left-handers dominated batting line-up) cannot shake the steady line-up from Jayasuriya to Sangakkara. I would drop Tharanga for this match. Yes, I know he has two hundreds (against Bangladesh and even worse Zimbabwe) and is in good nick. But if you saw the way in which Edwards got him first ball and Abdur Razzaq's harmless delivery which he edged. He is not the kind of player you want to go with against quality teams. Zimbabwe and Bangladesh is fine. But Sri Lanka please don't give away your first wicket quickly again. My money is on SL for today!
Another interesting aspect of the tournament has been that, all the games played so far have been low scoring and slow. Generally, you expect high-scoring and quick games on the sub-continent pitches. Just have a look at these scores of teams batting first (I have ignored the qualifying part):
1. England: 125
2. New Zealand: 195
3. Sri Lanka: 253
4. West Indies: 234
The Average score of the team batting first in Champion's trophy is: 202.
And that's shocking to say the least. You expect the average to hover somewhere in the range of 250 - 275. And what we have now is a good 50 runs below.
Come on batsmen! Turn it on! Don't whine like the South Africans about the pitch. Learn from Flemming (89), Morton (90*), Lara (71) and Gilchrist (92)!
