Cricket: From the Far End

With the series between South Africa and Pakistan getting over (Win to South Africa 2-1), all test matches are now over and all teams are preparing for the World Cup.

• South Africa and Pakistan will still play a 5 match ODI series, starting Feb 4th, in South Africa
• Australia, England and New Zealand are playing a triangular in Australia
• India and West Indies just completed a 4 matches series (3-1 India) and India and Sri Lanka will play another, both in India
• Australia and New Zealand will also play another 3 match ODI series in New Zealand, starting Feb 16th.
• In addition, there is a ICC World Cricket League tournament going on in Kenya which features some teams that are playing in the World Cup.

Here is the calendar from cricinfo.com

Will this win bring the old batting glory back? I hope it does. This was a classical home ODI win for India: A Sachin 100 (it was not like his old centuries at top though, but still achieved in 76 balls batting at no 4), two fifties and a superfast 40 taking the score to 341/3 and then the opposition blown away by some good bowling.

So India takes the series 3-1 and the next one is a four match ODI series against Sri Lanka, starting Feb 8th at Kolkata.

Sachin scored his 41st century. It’s amazing that he is pretty close to having nearly twice as many centuries as the no 2 (Jayasuriya, 23) and no 3 (Ganguly, 22). There was a time when Ganguly was seriously chasing Sachin in the ODI hundreds. His successful return to the ODI side brings up that possibility again. There is not much chance that they will open together again, but there is a good chance they will add to their 16 partnerships of 100 or more while opening and a couple more for other wickets.

What could be the record to lose a day-night ODI game the quickest? I don’t know whether this is that, but England lost to Australia on Jan 26th (Australia Day) in a day-night game before the floodlights were switched on. It led to an unusual thing - their coach Duncan Fletcher publicly apologised for England’s performance. In the ongoing triangular series they have won 1 (against New Zealand) and lost 4 they have played.

Actually, so have New Zealand (won 1, lost 4). Australia, predictably have won all 6 they have played so far.

The only positive thing England and New Zealand can look at is teams in the past have had hopeless results in the pre-world cup games but have done quite well in the world cup. Most recent example is India in 2003.