Jamaica
News - Real Estate - Sports
Source: Cricket Zone, March 11, 2007)
No clear favorites as World cup gets ready for gala opening
Perhaps for
the first time there are no clear favorites as the ninth edition of the World
Cup gets ready for the gala opening in the West Indies on Sunday.
One-day cricket is now being played with a
daring that is way beyond imagination. Grand totals are being posted that were
never thought possible.
But, by its very nature, the one-day game is a
huge game of chance.
The current edition of the World Cup - richest
in terms of prize money with $2.4 million of a full prize pot of $5 million
going to the winner - will be a kind of jumbo lottery never held before in the
cricket world.
The gap between the defending champion Australia,
on the hunt for an unprecedented hat-trick of titles, has narrowed so much in
recent events that this World Cup can also be considered to be the most open
ever.
No Test-playing nation will be going into the
showpiece event without some hope that the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow
is attainable now.
Pitch conditions determine much of cricket. The
playing surfaces that teams have come across in warm up games last week suggest
that a tough, boiling contest to fray the nerves is on the cards.
Australia won the Champions Trophy in India
last year on similar sluggish pitches that allowed batsmen very few comforts. It
was one prize that had eluded the Aussies for so long and they kept their nerve
to triumph in knock-out situations in every game after dropping a league match
to the West Indies.
Since then, the world champion has hit such a low
in five successive defeats at the hands of England and New Zealand in the
one-day game, that too after a memorable 5-0 Ashes Test victory, that their
chances are being written off even by such knowledgeable observers as Sir Viv
Richards, a cricket icon from this part of the world.
From the warm up games has also emerged the
forecast that teams with quality spinners can expect to go all the way while the
heavy weight sides like Australia and South Africa, which do not have a spinner
of note in their ranks, are likely to find the going tough.
As if the doubts over the pitches are not enough
to jangle the nerves of the favoured teams, comes the slightly under prepared
nature of the Caribbean.
Construction to get things ready never seems
to end. Traffic can be chaotic, hotels and watering holes can be too busy and
ships in the harbours are chock-a-block with cricket tourists.
The modern media hyperbole is such that pressures
on teams are immense even in the holiday paradise that the Caribbean prides
itself on being and on which plank it sells itself to the world of tourism.
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