 |
| |
|
 |
 |
|
|
||||||||||||||
|
Big event, big problems Posted: Friday March 07, 2003 1:56 PMBy Candy Reid, SI.com The Cricket World Cup in South Africa was billed as the sport's biggest event to date. Well it's certainly had everything so far -- controversy a-plenty, broken records (good and bad), upsets, a drug scandal, and finally the weather came into play towards the end of the group stage. South Africa failed in their bid to qualify for the super-sixes despite being the host nation. But surprisingly Zimbabwe and Kenya both went through. Australia won all six of their group 'A' matches, but had to do without leg-spinner Shane Warne who is serving a 1-year suspension for taking a banned diuretic. Before the tournament began, it was England who grabbed the headlines. In the end they did not travel to Harare, forfeiting the points, and then saw their hopes of moving on to the next stage dashed as the rain came down as Zimbabwe battled Pakistan in the final group 'A' match. New Zealand also forfeited a match to Kenya but still managed to finish third in Group B. Stephen Fleming's men sneaking in after South Africa miscalculated the run-chase when playing Sri Lanka in their final group game. The West Indies began their campaign with a bang and ended it the same way but Carl Hooper's men are on their way home after failing to qualify. India struggled in their first match against the Dutch and were then beaten emphatically by World Champions Australia. Fans in their homeland went crazy and from that moment on India got their act together, especially the much vaunted batting line-up, and started playing like a team that could win the world cup. The most awaited group match pitted India against Pakistan - but it was a rather one-sided affair, India coming through with relative ease. Pakistan had a poor tournament after only managing to beat non-test sides Holland and Namibia, so there will be no repeat of 1992 when Pakistan won the World Cup since Waqar Younis's men failed to qualify for the next phase for the first time since 1975. In fact the only highlight for the Pakistani's was Wasim Akram's remarkable feat of becoming the first cricketer to take 500 one-day wickets. Minnows Canada had an up and down World Cup. They won their first ever match in the tournament with victory over test-nation Bangladesh and crumbled to the lowest ever one-day international score against Sri Lanka. Holland also won their first ever World Cup match by beating Namibia. During that win Feiko Kloppenburg made history by becoming the first Dutch player to reach a century in international competition. The Netherlands also pushed for test-status with good performances against the other 5 teams in group 'A'. Kenya have been the most surprising team so far, moving through to the super-sixes thanks to a huge win over previously undefeated Sri Lanka in group 'B'. And the Kenyans look almost certain to reach the semi-finals since, because of the questionable points system they could lose all three of their super-six matches and still progress. Bangladesh had a terrible tournament. Their first match was bad - a 60-run defeat to Canada -- their last match was bad -- a 32-run defeat to Kenya, and oh yeah, everything in the middle was bad. Bangladesh finishing last in group B with just 2 points (which came from a no-result against the West Indies.) So all in all it's been an interesting tournament so far. Some might argue that the 6 best nations aren't still in the competition, and that Kenya and Zimbabwe were given a freebee into the Super-sixes. But neither team could do anything about the points they received from New Zealand and England respectively, and now must concentrate on producing the goods and proving they should still be in the tournament. Should Kenya reach the semi-final, let's hope that they can produce a better performance than they did against the West Indies.
|
|
||||||||||||
| ||||||||||||||
