World Cup at the Starting Gun

The Cricket World Cup 2011 starts tomorrow. Whatever happens, and this is probably the most open competition for a long time, what is vital is that we see good, close cricket. Four years ago we had a pretty tame competition. Six weeks of pretty tedious cricket ending in darkness and near farce. The T20 game has rejuvenated cricket and injected large sums of money. The future of the 50-over format will be damaged, possibly forever, if tomorrow’s competition doesn’t deliver.

Having all said that we should be in for a pretty good competition. There are more, earlier, match-ups between teams that should produce good games (starting with India and Bangladesh tomorrow). The test playing nations are much more equal than they have been for a long time and the winner could easily come from quite a few sides: India, South Africa, Sri Lanka maybe even Australia – with the others pushing hard. Mind you … those first two are real chokers…