Funny are the vagaries of cricket. It’s the second round of a World Cup and a team that lost today — Australia — is going to the semifinals. And the team that won later in the evening — India — is going home. It’s hard to think of another sport where such an oddity would occur at a World Cup.
But that’s the Super Eights format for you – an ICC invention that allows one team to get away with a bad day, and another team to pay for it through its nose; one that makes calculators more important than bats and balls. India won four games out of five in the tournament, the same as Australia, but one bad spell of 10-odd over’s against Australia did them in.
Compare that to the West Indies: they are in the semifinals despite one win less than India, and only one outright win if you discount winning by a Super Over. This run-rate gobbledygook could have been avoided with the simple yet effective knockouts format which would have seen four meaningful quarterfinals instead of these run-rate-reliant Super Eights games which create convoluted contests like this one.
There was nothing to take from this game for South Africa. Thanks to Pakistan exposing Australia’s inadequacies earlier today, South Africa were out of the semifinals race. But India had half a chance of qualification. The men with the calculators informed us that MS Dhoni’s needed to win this game by scoring at least 150 and then winning by 32 runs or more.
Thanks to a top-order that has been all show, no go, India barely got over the 150-run mark with a fine counter-punching stand by Suresh Raina and MS Dhoni. But the magic number for Pakistan was a mere 122. When South Africa got over that mark with 20 balls to spare, they had ensured Pakistan a superior net run rate than India’s. The large Pakistani contingent at the Premadasa Stadium today cheered South Africa’s march towards 122. One could call it Pakistan’s first cricketing win over India at a World Cup. So what if it was by proxy.
While the result itself had failed to matter afterwards, this game was a thriller in its own right. South Africa lost Hashim Amla and Jacques Kallis early, but Faf du Plessis’ 65 (38b) settled the qualification race. Now the attention turned towards South Africa trying to chase down the 153-run target for their first win of the Super Eights.
Wickets fell and the contest got tighter. It boiled down to 14 off the last over from Lakshmipathy Balaji. The Morkel brothers each clubbed a six over midwicket in that over and got out immediately after, letting Balaji be the hero of the one-run win.