Super Eight Series - Separating the `facts from the myths’
By Colin E. Croft
Guyana Chronicle
March 28, 2007
AS the Super 8 series started in Antigua & Barbuda yesterday, to be followed by matches in Guyana, Grenada and Barbados, before we go on to the semi-finals in Jamaica and St Lucia, at least one player, Australia’s left-handed opening batsman Matthew Hayden, has been having a magnificent and very productive CWC 2007.
His batting is certainly on song!
I expect that by the time the competition has been completed, batsmen like Sri Lanka’s Sanath Jayasuriya, New Zealand’s Steven Fleming, England’s Paul Collingwood, and West Indies’ Chris Gayle, among others, will be scoring heavily too.
Hayden did not play in any of the warm-up games at all, but scored 60 in his team’s first game of the Group ‘A’ versus Scotland. Against the Netherlands, he “failed”, scoring only 29.
Against main group rivals, South Africa, he not only made a wonderfully crafted 101, but managed to demolish the famed South African bowling attack, including highly rated world-class bowlers like Makhaya Ntini and Shaun Pollock, for the fastest-ever CWC century off 66 deliveries, eclipsing Canada’s John Davidson’s 67-ball century against the West Indies in CWC 2003 in South Africa. The changes - they are always a-coming!
In the very first game of the Super 8, against the improving hosts, West Indies, Hayden also made history, making the highest-ever CWC score by an Australian, 158, against the supposedly improved bowling, as his team amassed a formidable 322-6.
If this is the sign of things to come, then Australia and especially Matthew Hayden would be rolling all the way to the run bank. Also, these scores are from a guy who, about two years ago, lost his place in Australia’s one-day team, and may have thought that he had no way back.
There is nothing like real determination. He is back with a big bang!
Before we get into the rest of the cricket, though, we must reflect on the effect and result that the last sad week has had for us here in the Caribbean. Like the CWC 2007, none of us, however well travelled, have managed to see anything quite like this. It was numbing!
Unfortunately for us in, and of, the Caribbean, whichever team wins the ICC CWC 2007 will always be associated, and the triumph diminished, with the fact that the competition had been severely tinged with the murder of Bob Woolmer, Pakistan’s recent coach.
While the reasons and modus operandi for the dastardly act are still to be ascertained, the stigma of having such a luminary killed in our backyard will never be eliminated; never!
The correct decision to continue to play the games of the tournament has already been taken. However, one has to wonder as to why there should be such a call; to have the ICC CWC 2007 cancelled. Is there some other more sinister plot afoot here? Indeed, was the murder perpetuated so that the Caribbean could “look bad” and be cowed?
In the Munich 1972 Olympics, more athletes than just one died, in open terrorism. Yet there was no cancellation of the games. Avery Brundage, then CEO of world athletics, and even the ever-suffering Israelis, insisted that the Olympic Games should continue.
About six years ago, two airplanes were deliberately flown into the twin-towers that were the World Trade Center, in New York. More than 3 000 people died instantly. More are still dying from various ailments garnered from that event. No-one has stopped flying!
Therefore, one has to wonder if those suggesting that the ICC CWC 2007 should have been cancelled - because of (I give you this) a horrific event, murder - do not have some other agenda!
Is it that these folks would like to see our Caribbean further diminished? Was there some strange situation developing that would have allowed the Caribbean to have invested so very heavily financially, logistically, even emotionally, in the CWC 2007, for it all to be ground into the dust by the suggested cancelling of the event? A thousand times, NO!
While everything is not fully in place everywhere, at least this is our time to show the world that we can produce excellence too. That is simply that!
At the very least, while I am quite sad about the death and the murder of Bob Woolmer, I am at least heartened to believe that the Jamaicans, one of our Caribbean family, are not being blamed for the event, as has been the case for so many wrong accusations in the past! Where the hell were the supposedly wonderful security and world-class technology anyway? Were we not led to believe that such situations could not be developed?
For the West Indies, like every other team now playing the Super 8 series, the games and the tournament would have already been very traumatic; interesting at least; even as it would be quite tiring too, for all concerned.
It should also be noted that the last eight teams left in the competition are not the ones that many had expected or predicted, even hoped, that would be there at this stage of the competition.
After all, both of the rated, eliminated teams, India and Pakistan, had been high favourites to perhaps even win the whole hog. No-one anywhere expected these teams to be eliminated in the first round.
By the way, contrary to what has been written in, predominantly, the Indian press, I see nothing wrong with the way that both teams had been eliminated.
All of the teams started at the same time and with the same gun. Each team played the same amount of first round games and these two, India and Pakistan, faltered badly, for whatever reasons, even before the race had started to develop.
Why are Ireland and Bangladesh being blamed for the ineptitude and lack of evolution to the plans of both India and Pakistan? All that the Bangladeshis and the Irish did was to come out prepared to play well.
The Super-8 teams are: West Indies, South Africa, Ireland, Australia, Bangladesh, England, New Zealand and Sri Lanka. Additionally, West Indies, Australia, New Zealand and Sri Lanka all start the Super 8 round with 2 points each, after having beaten their respective fellow-group Super 8 qualifiers. Based on the recent form shown in the preliminary round, only one would have to think that the West Indies, Australia, New Zealand and Sri Lanka would contest the semi-finals.
To date, Australia and Sri Lanka have looked truly awesome. The Super 8 series would see the teams each playing six games.
By the end of those, we will see who the semi-finalists would be. I would not be surprised if the two form teams, Australia and Sri Lanka, meet in the final!
If, though, these “rated” teams believe that the above-noted situation would come about without hard work, then I will suggest that a few of these teams, even the Australians and the Sri Lankans, could really have the same experiences of the already demolished India and Pakistan.
Both India and Pakistan, the countries and players, are so stunned that even after their flights back home, they are still waiting to find out what hit them!
None of these teams should take the always fun-loving Irish or Bangladeshi teams for granted. I will again suggest that either, or both, of Ireland or Bangladesh will pull off an upset; maybe even two or three; in the Super 8 - upsets that would mean that at least two “rated” teams will cry all the way back home! The West Indies are already at home, so they would not have very far to go.
One could only continue to hope that they come out to play every time they have to, so that at the very least, the trophy stays in the Caribbean.