Mighty Lara is Back With a Bang !!

The biggest Worldcup in the history of cricket was launched after a colorful and flamboyant ceremony with quite a bit of indigenous cultural elements. The theme song of the world cup is highly motivating and well written and very well sung. In short it was a feast for the eyes, but whoever came with the idea of handing a humungous bat to the pilot leading every team must be respectfully given the dreaded pink slip.

But the biggest feast for the eyes came few hours later when host nation South Africa opened their bid for the Worldcup title against underdogs West Indies. Few months ago when I started to do my research on the most teams in the Worldcup 2003 it started to emerge that West Indies and Sri Lanka can be the surprise of the tournament. Ever since I crossed Atlantic and made my home in USA and been friend with many west Indians I started to understand the problems that are plaguing the Caribbean cricket. The impact of American media and dream of Caribbean youth to play in NBA or NFL where a single player can, and in fact he does, make more money in one year than the total prize money (about 5 million US dollars) of this Worldcup of cricket. I think it is very important for the west Indian cricket and world cricket that West Indies does good in this world cup, as the next Worldcup will be staged in West Indies.

The start of the world cup could not have been scripted better than this, the coming in form of one of the best batsman in the world cricket today and a signature south African fight back. During the dinner break (doesn’t it sound weird to not call it a lunch break!) mighty Brian Lara was interviewed and told that they have been waiting and planning for this match for quite some time. It sure did look like windies came up with a meticulously worked out plan and followed it, that gave them very well deserving victory over mighty strong Africans. Lara’s innings of 116 of 181 balls was one of the finest innings I have ever seen which exhibited full commitment, dedication and concentration, a hall mark of the greatest batsmen who ever graced the green grounds of cricket. Right about 30th over there was a bowler’s back drive that Lara hit on a ball by Makhaya Nitini and Nitini had to run away from it, as I think, if he did not then he might have also cross the boundary line along with the ball, that was such a mighty stroke. Chanderpaul and Hooper played marvelous innings, but right around 40th over Lara clearly drained out opted to, quite wisely though!, get out on the short mid off. Which, to the much of south African dismay, only brought in Sarwan and thus windies handed responsibilities from the vintage players to a very capable young pair of Ricardo Powel and RR Sarwan. What they did to South African can not be captured through the ink of my pen but I would just say this; before these young fellows arrived Shaun Pollock’s bowling figures were 6 overs 2 maidens and 9 runs for two wickets, but at the end of the game his figures were 10 overs 2 maidens 2 wickets for 52 (FIFTY TWO) runs. I think windies’ plan was to save wickets and build a ground for Sarwan and Powel and keep getting singles and twos. They followed their plan and men of Carl Hooper won a very crucial game. It was crucial because in my opinion from pool B South Africa, West Indies and Sri Lanka will move to the supper six level and should that happen windies will carry their points against South Africa in the super six and south Africa will be handicapped for losing to westindies.

South African bowling was of clinical precision in first 30 overs and Pollock and Nittini bowled really well in that period. South African bowling suffered a lot because Allen Donald, Lance Klusner (Zulu Worrier) and Jacque Kallas bowled very bad. I was sad to see Donald treated like a club bowler. Shuan Pollock might have his reasons but I can not understand why Allen Donald did not open the bowling. He still has that high briskly rising trajectory that suits the profile of a test bowler with 3 slips a gully and 2 men in catching position, such fielding you can only enjoy in the first fifteen overs. The idea of playing Allen Donald lose any meanings if he is not exploiting these natural gifts. After seeing the game I think South Africa need to improve their bowling and need to rethink their bowling plans. They need a quality spin bowler (whatever happened to Paul Adams ?) because they waste too much time in getting their pacers bowl overs, which ultimately costed them the opening game of the world cup as they were penalized one over for the slow bowling rate. Allen Donald, known as white lightening, looked lethargic from the delivery of his first ball and never bothered windie’s batters even once. Jacque Kallas hasn’t recovered from his foot injury and Klusner has become a spinner who is a very good batsman. I mean a fast bowler becomes spinner when a wicket keepers stands regularly on the stumps for his bowling.

South African batting is one of the best in the world, may be even better than Indian batting line I mean a team in which Nicki Boje bats at number 9 (The man has two one day hundreds) can be considered at par with Indian batting line. Gary Kirsten played a great innings, well then what’s new he always does, but how can one forget to mention the fight back by Klusner the Zulu fighter (name given to him after the legendary Shaka Zulu (1785-1828)’s fighting abilities!!) he almost took the match away from windies and also in my opinion gave windies the match too. Here is why, when he got out on the none striker’s end was Niki Boje and Klusner, who got caught on the boundary opted to walk towards pavilions instead of crossing Boje and letting him face the next ball and thus made, nature’s tale ender, Makhya Nittini play 5th ball of the last over for a shot that was destined to get out only to leave Nicki Boje face last ball of the last over to score 8 runs.

I want to grab the moment to make the point that in this time and age when un-sportsman like conduct in cricket is an occurance of every day when players refuse to leave ground when they were clearly out this fellow Dippenaar of South Africa had the courage to simply walk out when Jacbos stumped him and umpire Venkat was about to call 3rd umpire.

The game had one of the elite umpires in the game, namely Venkataraghavan and DJ Harper making less than perfect decisions on no-ball and wide ball calls and letting poor WW Hinds walk to the pavilion (caught behind) for an appeal that would have been rejected by loudly reminding Pollock that “Gentlman Ball never touched the bat”. That also raises a concern why not let affected team challenge the call by an umpire ?