SA, WI start campaign on tricky track
Feb. 23: The 22 yards of turf set aside for Thursday’s Group B league match between South Africa and the West Indies is bound to be the major talking point as international cricket returns to the Ferozshah Kotla after a 14-month hiatus.
In December 2009, India’s game against Sri Lanka did not even reach the 25th over with the ball exploding around the faces and ribs of the visitors. The immediate impact was an International Cricket Council-imposed ban that briefly threatened Delhi’s chances of hosting World Cup matches.
Since then, the “square” has been under the charge of the ICC’s pitch guru Andy Atkinson and the BCCI’s ground and wickets committee chairman Venkat Sunderam, and if indeed the track — currently showing patches of green at either end — does hold out for the scheduled 100 overs, it promises to be a fascinating contest. Ever since they returned to international cricket, the Proteas have been the almost-there men of the five World Cups they have played in.
This time too, they start out as among the tournament favourites and skipper Graeme Smith will want to make an early statement of purpose. Given the experience and balance of his squad, and the unusual move in selecting as many as three spinners, Smith will feel that he does indeed has a team capable of beating the best in the business.
The Proteas’ warm-up win over the Australians was a comprehensive one and showed that the men who matter — the quicks, the batsmen and the spinners — are in prime touch. In Hashim Amla and Jacques Kallis, Smith has a pair of batsmen whom every bowling attack in the world is wary of, behind whom are some very fine strikers of the ball.
Factoring in the number of South Africans sprinkled among the various Indian Premier League teams and their recent record over the West Indies — 11 wins on the trot — and Smith may be justified in feeling that he has the firepower to make a telling start to his final tournament as the nation’s ODI skipper.
On the other side are a team in free-fall. Individually, the West Indies represent an array of sparkling talent but collectively, they simply have not been able to put together the results that should so obviously be coming.
A change of guard at the top too does not appear to have helped and Darren Sammy’s side were over-run by Sri Lanka in their away series last month. And while he too has a number of IPL stars in the ranks, Sammy knows his side will have to do something extraordinary to trip South Africa up.
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