The Cricketist Begins

It has been a fabulous beginning to the Cricket calendar this year. India had a better than expected outing in South Africa, England have outdone themselves in the Australian outback and a controversy ridden Pakistan team did wonderfully under difficult conditions in New Zealand. Results from rest of the world have been on predictable lines. With this has started the ICC Cricket World Cup. Up until the knock out stages, most of the teams have lived up to their expectations with the exception of England and India. England have vacillated between awesome to awful with a frequency better than the latest Intel processor. While Ireland and Bangladesh have benefitted from such largesse, India and South Africa have been left bemused. India, the firm favourites, having 12 men on the ground with the audience showing maniacal faith, had left a lot to be desired till the knock out stage. But with the solid counter-punch handed to Australia in the Quarters, they seem to be crawling back to contention. Sri Lanka have shown ruthlessness in their dealings with opponents. Their spinners have been sublime throughout. West Indies were unsure why they were there and have exited without causing many eye brows to arch. Pakistan is peaking at the right moment. New Zealand have shown that the ancient ritual of hara-kiri is still in vogue with their sound drubbing of South Africa who seem hell bent upon copyrighting the word “CHOKER” for themselves, sound competition from England and India notwithstanding. The semi-finals line-up is a trifle surprising with the absence of Australia and South Africa. All in all, the business half of the world cup has been pretty much what it is expected to be, business like.

Coming to individuals, two men have stood out colossally. One would be our very own, Yuvraj Singh who for once has decided to make appropriate use of his enormous potential. He could have become anything from a playboy to a messiah to billions and at last seems to have made peace with the “mini me” that had threatened to take his career downhill. India’s recent world cup campaigns of the last decade and a half have been over reliant on Sachin Tendulkar and it is fantastic to see a different man standing up. Yuvi has at least another World Cup in him and a lot of international cricket in between. This may be the crowning era of his otherwise flawed genius. The other man who has gotten better with every match, and I am not talking about just the World Cup, is Jonathan Trott. He has bloomed late but he has bloomed brilliant. Spectacular performance in the Ashes has been bettered with a dream like outing in the World Cup. The English batting line up, which shows the hangover of all the beer that the whole of England consumes, suddenly seems to have one teetotaller up its rolls. Trott is the leading run getter of this edition of the World Cup and is still going strong as this post goes up. Both Yuvraj and Trott are in what could be called the middle age of their Cricket lives and both are showing signs of achieving the greatness that would last more than a generation. Time shall tell, how they hold up their respective promises.

After having typed 548 words, yours truly realizes that the main purpose of the post has not been touched upon yet. As the URL says, this is supposed to be an IPL blog. So what the heck with all this talk of the WC? Well, the WC performances are pretty much a precursor to what we will see in the IPL. It is not just the forms of players that is important, but also the way the fields and pitches are going to behave is to be extrapolated from these matches. In all likelihood, we are going to have some very exciting contests in the coming days. Nothing more so than the epic battle in Mohali between India and Pakistan of course. So let’s smack up our lips in anticipation of the delicious fares and let’s get our dinner napkins ready.

Till the next post, Au Revoir!!!