Which would have been great for India if the ODI series had been coupled with a Test series. Unfortunately, it is going to be another year before England tour India, and much of this would have been forgotten. England, on its part, are going to have tough times before then, playing Pakistan and Sri Lanka. And most likely would have lost their No. 1 ranking by then. India, also, have a tough tour of Australia coming up. Therefore, the next Test series may not be the battle at the top that we saw with the India tour of England.

Anyway, be that may, it is a welcome turnaround of fortunes for MS Dhoni. After the miserable England tour, Dhoni had another terrible tournament, the Champions League, where his team, Chennai Super Kings, ended up at the bottom of the league. And people have been talking about the end of his Midas Touch. That would not be a good thing for India, but hopefully that is not the case, and the last few months have been just a deviation from the norm.

Eoin Morgan will captain England in the ODI against Ireland in Dublin

OK, you might think that this is not a big deal considering that Andrew Strauss captained the team against South Africa. But Strauss never played 23 one-dayers for South Africa. The only other person I can think of is Kepler Wessels, who played for Australia and then captained South Africa. But he was well into the end of his career when that happened.

So, sanath played a 20-20 and a one day international as well. And now, when young dinesh chandimal has shown the world that what an great talent he is, with one sparkling century followed by equally enterprising half century, we can imagine what would have been the possible result, had young chandimal played those two matches, specially the 1st one day international, instead of veteran sanath.

I guess maybe Sri Lanka may have won by 10 wickets instead of the miserable 9-wicket victory in the Twenty20 match. In the first ODI, Sri Lanka were 121 all out in 27 overs, a collective failure of the entire team. So, Chandimal would have saved them? Maybe I should help out with Chandimal’s resume:

And now, when young dinesh chandimal has shown the world that what an great inconsistent talent he is, with an innings of 5 runs from 7 balls followed by one sparkling century followed by a duck from 5 balls followed by an equally enterprising half century

Wait, there is more:

selectors perfectly managed a blunder by including 29 year old thilina kadamby in the team. Whatever his age is, it’s not a matter, but concerned is that he is such an out dated player, especially for one day cricket. And, now you cant dare to imagine even, that he was the national team’s caption for lone twenty-20 match of England tour. It was an ridiculous decision and team suffered through out the one day series, because of it. He managed just 36 runs in four matches, and eventually was being dropped before final match.

Yes, you cannot imagine that he was the captain for the Twenty20 match which, to repeat, Sri Lanka made a terrible mess of by only winning by 9 wickets and not allowing Kandamby to bat and show what a miserable failure he was as a captain and one day batsman.

I also suppose the selectors forced Dilshan not to drop someone who only made 17 runs in the 5 matches. I am pretty sure that the team suffered throughout the one day series because of it. And that person was not even eventually dropped before the final match. Oh, he cannot drop himself? Oh, well.

[Cook's] got his own game and he can’t really get away from that. He just has to keep believing in himself and keep playing that role, and probably improve on it as well. Over a period of time, once you’ve played a certain number of matches, you find different ways of playing in a better way without getting away from your own game, and that’s something Cook has to find by himself.

He has to stick to his own game rather than try to hit big shots and get out of shape, as he did towards the end of his innings at Lord’s. You have to trust your ability and trust the shots you’ve been playing throughout, and hit those gaps – simple as that. It’s tough when a guy like Lasith Malinga is coming at you, but every player has to trust his own ability and not try to be someone else.

So after this was written, Cook scored 95* from 75 balls to secure a crushing 10-wicket defeat while Mahela scores 9 off 12. Surely, someone who has scored 18 Test centuries before the age of 27 deserves a bit more respect. What is more, the man had already made 48 off 52 in the second match and had just scored an ODI century against your team while the rest of his team was failing (119 versus the next highest score, 41) and his strike rate matched the innings run rate! Cook undoubtedly has some talent and even if one-dayers are not his strong suit, he doesn’t need this kind of patronizing.

• India v Ireland: Yuvraj (50*) and Yusuf Pathan (30*)
• India v Netherlands: Yuvraj (51*) and Dhoni (19*)
• India v Australia: Yuvraj (57*) and Raina (34*)
• India v Sri Lanka: Dhoni (91*) and Yuvraj (21*)
• India v WI (1st): Rohit Sharma (68*) and Raina (43)
• India v WI (3rd): Rohit Sharma (86*) and Harbhajan (41)

Notice the trends. In the first three matches, Yuvraj made a fifty and India won the match. In the Sri Lanka match, Dhoni promoted himself ahead of Yuvraj and did his job. In all the four matches in the World Cup, India won by at least 5 wickets. Yuvraj and Raina are specialist batsmen. Dhoni and Pathan have reputations as explosive batsmen. The 1st ODI against West Indies, India won by 4 wickets and Raina got out with only 33 runs to get.

Devanshu’s assertion that India bats “very, very deep” does not match the facts here because only the last match can even meet the case of the tail leading India to victory. In all the other cases, a genuine middle-order batting pair consolidated the task of chasing a target under control. In fact, watching the final against Sri Lanka was almost boring. The only worry was if suddenly several wickets fell against the run of play. But that didn’t happen and India always seemed in control.

In the match between perpetual WC knockout match losers, South Africa finally removed the thorn from their side. It is not fun when New Zealand shares the top spot for giving it up when it really matters. And after having some laughs, the Saffers went from 108/2 to 172 all out, losing by a staggering 49 runs chasing 222.

So here is the record: Won 30 of 42 group-stage matches. Won zero of 5 knockout matches.

To rewind, the tragic performances of South Africa at the World Cup:

1992: South Africa needed a plausible 22 off 13 balls to beat England in the semi-final. Rain interrupted play, and when it resumed, the rain rule converted the target to an impossible 21 runs off 1 ball.

1996: A masterpiece from Lara and South Africa lose by 19 runs. Remember that the West Indies had a terrible tournament: winning only 2 matches in the group stage, albeit one versus Australia, losing against Kenya and ending up as the last qualifier in their group.

1999: The drop that cost them the match against Australia in the Super Six which meant that the crazy run-out that lead to the tie against the same opponent in the semi-final ended their tournament.

2003: Tight loss against West Indies, Stephen Fleming, inability to understand the D/L target and Kenya’s surprising surge (aided by NZ’s forfeit) meant that South Africa failed to qualify for the knockouts in the tournament it was hosting.

2007: I guess they ran out of gas as demonstrated by their loss against Bangladesh and in any case, ended up against Australia again in the semi-finals, losing by 7 wickets and almost 19 overs remaining.

2011: In case you forgot, South Africa topped the group with 5 big wins (7 wickets, 231 runs, 131 runs, 206 runs and even the 3 wicket win against India chasing close to 300). Their only loss came against the maverick fighting-for-their-lives England team who they had already dispatched for just 171. Among the possible qualifiers from Group B, New Zealand seemed to be the most harmless until it all ended in a few crazy overs.

What if Ponting had retired after the 2007 World Cup? Today, he would be remembered thus:

• Lead Australia to two impeccable World Cup victories and was part of another winning team (1999) and a losing finalist (1996)
• Lost only 3 Tests: a dead rubber against India in Mumbai and two in the close 2005 Ashes series (both tight losses – 2 runs and 3 wickets).
• Captain of Australia when they destroyed almost every opponent in Tests, including South Africa (2-0 and 3-0 home and away). Was part of the only Australian team to win in India in recent times (only captained the last Test)
• Lots and lots of runs in both forms of the game, with some great knocks like the huge century in the 2003 final.
• Batting statistics compared very favorably with Tendulkar and, at one point, it was plausible that Ponting could have overtaken him in total runs and centuries.

Now, as he goes off into the sunset, here is his record

• Lost the Ashes three times (twice away, once at home), including the only time ever when a team has lost three matches by an innings.
• Lost in India twice.
• Lost at home to South Africa.
• Gave away a match to Pakistan.
• Never did anything much with the Twenty20 World Cup.
• Saw Tendulkar pull away in the Test records quickly and beyond reach, while his own record slumped to “great, but mortal” status.

Full disclosure: I don’t really like Ponting that much – in fact, I don’t like him at all. So this is all good. Ponting owed a lot of his success to having a team of greats (Warne, McGrath, Gilchrist), and if he had quit earlier, he would have had an undeserved legacy. As it happened, he was exposed after the retirements of the senior players. Now, he will be remembered, but not too fondly.

I suspect that Australia will have to go through at least a couple of captains before they start climbing back to the top. There is a sense that Australia’s code has been cracked and i don’t think Michael Clarke can turn that around. None of the other existing players look like captaincy material at this point, so we will have to wait a while.

The twist is that Group A ended up with the teams ranked out of order to their strength on paper (Australia ending up 3rd and Canada above Kenya). And Group B almost exactly to what you might have predicted before the tournament. (you can quibble where SA or India is better).

To see how different the two groups played, here are a couple of illustrations on how close the matches were (Green = close/upset, Blue = promising, Red = walkover). Thank God for England!

Group A	Group B

A finger injury to Umar Akmal has lessened the chances of him replacing brother Kamran as Pakistan’s wicketkeeper… Though the injury to Umar’s right index finger is not thought to be serious, it is unlikely now that the management will risk using him behind the stumps, allowing Kamran to probably retain his place in the XI despite his horror show in the 110-run loss to New Zealand on Tuesday.[...]

According to manager Intikhab Alam, scans and an x-ray revealed no damage but no risks were taken in putting him through a practice session.[...]

The timing and consequence of Umar’s injury is bound to raise eyebrows, especially in light of what happened after the infamous Sydney Test in early January 2010. Then, after another poor display behind the stumps from Kamran hurled the side towards a stunning Test defeat, Umar reportedly refused to play the next Test in Hobart if his brother was dropped.

 

        1st     2nd     3rd     4th     5th     6th     7th   In QF
IND  60.93%  22.51%  13.38%   3.15%   0.03%   0.00%   0.00%  99.97%
WIN  20.23%  26.66%  20.77%  19.17%   9.64%   3.52%   0.00%  86.84%
ENG   3.16%  22.94%  27.19%  32.37%  11.58%   2.76%   0.00%  85.66%
SAF  15.52%  22.89%  25.96%  20.03%  10.03%   5.57%   0.00%  84.40%
IRE   0.09%   2.51%   6.78%  13.72%  39.11%  33.81%   3.98%  23.10%
BAN   0.08%   2.48%   5.91%  11.56%  28.37%  46.93%   4.66%  20.04%
NED   0.00%   0.00%   0.00%   0.00%   1.23%   7.41%  91.36%   0.00%