Sri Lanka has been playing cricket like chess. They have been playing upto potential on the field like some other teams, but you’d notice a scheming strategist behind their World Cup campaign. We’ve discussed their strategy earlier too and had always backed them to be the finalists.

In fact, New Zealand too copied them and kept out Styris and Oram out of their match against Australia - a wonderful copy - since if they were to meet up Australia again they’d have a different team than the one that lost to Australia in the Super 8 ensuring that there is no psychological advantage to the winning team.

Finally, Australia and Sri Lanka are in the finals. Full marks to both for a relentless campaign. If you see at both, there is a difference in the way they approach the matches. Australia approaches them in an office like fashion, playing to heir full potential every time. Here lies the difference. Sri Lanka plays a different game in crucial matches. Murali’s grin widens, as does his seriousness. Vaas and Malinga don’t give even little room in the first 10 overs. And this strategy has not been exposed to the Australian openers yet. Sri Lanka also tightens up the screws in the middle overs through Murali and Jayasuriya (who looks the easiest target to the batsmen between these tough bowlers and hence batsmen try to go for the kill here and wickets start falling). Sri Lanka and Australia are the only teams that don’t try to contain the score, their only aim is to get the team out.

It’s not about playing to potential, it’s more about not exposing your cards, especially the Joker (Lasitha Malinga in this case).

There are 2 theoretical possibilities:

1. The Joker plays to potential and wrecks the Australian batting line up
2. The Australian Team focuses on wrecking the Joker so much, that the other bowlers wreck the Team.

It’s not whether they may win or not, but it is in their best interest not to show their Joker, who incidentally is also their least undocumented and studied weapon. This may not work for weaker teams, but when you have Vaas and Murali in the attack, you can take these chances.

In comparison, Australia, is psychologically weaker in the spin department - with the exit of Shane Warne, the big match player. Hogg, who is kind of a similar unexposed/ undocumented weapon on their end, doesn’t exactly categorize as a “different” bowler in terms as Murali on Malinga would. And without the big stage exposure - I expect Jayasuriya (if McGrath doesn’t get him) to take him to the cleaners. It’s going to be an interesting battle nevertheless.

Onedayers.com has a different Ranking System than the ICC and am sure if you go by this, you’d be better off at predicting in the Twenty20 World Cup. I used the same system to predict the following:

It seeded Ireland at No. 6 before the world cup
It predicted Bangladesh bowling attack to be one of the best in the world cup (alas their batting didn’t come up to the same standards).
It also put Sri Lanka as the team to watch for before the World Cup if Jayasuriya maintains his form.
It predicted Jayasuriya as the man to watch for!

There were no guesses but it was this ranking system that was used.

Well, in the final match I’d put my money on Sri Lanka, since both teams have a successful set of bowlers and batsmen, but Sri Lanka have a huge variety in their bowling.

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Like the Sri Lanka’s Stratagem against Ricky Ponting’s team in the World Cup Super 8, India Team Selection is also following a hidden agenda.

First consider these facts:

Is it not a fact that America is way ahead in terms of sports?
Is it not a fact that Americans are fanatics about their teams (as so are the European nations)?
Is it not a fact that India took over a large share of America’s business and India worked overtime so that American’s could enjoy their game of baseball, basketball or even football?

So, sometime, in 1980-90s a strategy was formed. A chief of police force was chosen for the task. The task was simple. Indian’s were too much emotionally attached to their hockey. This chief of police was commendable in the manner in which he stamped out terrorism from Punjab. His next task was even tougher. And nobody was to know the purpose of the mission (at least till the mission was successful). Today, he is successful in his task. And the task was - to stamp out Hockey from the minds of Indian people. It takes usually 20 years after the last triumph to wash out a sport from the mind of people. And if you see now, no one gets emotional discussing hockey. And full marks to the chief of Police who did not brag to media about his success. Since his mission was to free the minds of people so that they can get back to work and make India focus on work.

But there was an issue. A haryanvi lad around the same time, despite the best of government efforts to make slipshod teams (well they called ghavri, binny and mohinder pacers), won the World Cup. Well, Team India (the one which drives India to work) did not lose hope. They installed a battery of people (the matrix) to destroy this new game. And years down the line, they have achieved the same success. Today, cricket has become empty blabber (like garibi hatao or even the population problem) and is expected to die quite soon. Still the matrix is taking no chances. It has this game under it’s crushing hold, but it’s hawk eye is watching for any other deviant game which tries to rise it’s head.

Team India is on a roll!

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Well the cat is out amongst the pigeons. It did create a little flutter when Sachin Tendulkar and Saurav Ganguly were dropped from ODI and Virender Sehwag from Tests in Bangladesh. Harbhajan and Irfan Pathan were dropped from both forms of cricket.

Test squad: Wasim Jaffer, Dinesh Karthik, Rahul Dravid (capt), VVS Laxman, Sachin Tendulkar, Sourav Ganguly, Yuvraj Singh, Mahendra Singh Dhoni (wk), Anil Kumble, Sreesanth, Zaheer Khan, VRV Singh, Ramesh Powar, Rajesh Pawar, Munaf Patel.

ODI squad: Gautam Gambhir, Robin Uthappa, Virender Sehwag, Rahul Dravid (capt), Yuvraj Singh, Mahendra Singh Dhoni (wk), Dinesh Karthik, Manoj Tiwary, Dinesh Mongia, Piyush Chawla, Sreesanth, Munaf Patel, Zaheer Khan, RP Singh.

We can debate endlessly about the possible combinations. However, Irfan Pathan’s exclusion after a dressing room series (World Cup) is not exciting. We also need to get confidence into a person whom we expect to be possibly our next and only all rounder after Kapil Dev.

Recalling VVS Laxman was probably a very creative idea, but the ODI team could have done with Mohammad Kaif. We cannot recall anyone who can match the agility of Australia on the field except for Kaif or Yuvraj Singh. Kaif would be an exciting prospect even for Twenty20. And with the Twenty20 World Cup around the corner, we have to move fast a freeze our team positions soon. So after the World Cup disaster, experiments have to start now.

BCCI has once again wasted an opportunity to make history. Unless the agenda is something else…

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