...and welcome to my coverage of the 2011 Cricket World Cup!
The opening weekend saw three absolute thrashings of minnows by top-tier teams. All six teams tried to prove something early in this tournament and three of them succeeded. The results don't exactly help those of us trying to keep the lesser teams at these tournaments though as poor technique - both mental and physical - was exposed on each occasion. As I type this, Australia have chosen to bat against Zimbabwe and only carnage can follow.
Fans of the winning teams will no doubt be very pleased with the efforts of their countrymen (as an aside, I'm not sure English fans fit in this bracket - more likely the South African fans will be happy twice) but fans of competitive World Cup cricket can't help but feel that the bloated group-match round is merely an extension of the warm up matches.
The individual games:
India beat Bangladesh by 87 runs on a very flat wicket. Sehwag was the most impressive on show, not just for his 175 runs but the proclamation of his intention to bat for a long innings and the will power and patience (of a kind) to go through with this. Kholi also showed useful control in a situation where some may have forgiven an aggressive but brief stay at the crease. For Bangladesh there was the bizarre decision to bowl first and then bowl terribly, their batting was competent but not without an element of Sunil Gavaskar's attitude from 1975 (where he decided the total was too hard to chase and settled in for batting practice and ended on 35* after 60 overs)
New Zealand beat Kenya by 10 wickets by aiming at the stumps and hitting them or the legs precariously placed in their defense. It was a simple plan and well executed but will hardly give the team great confidence going forward (although this might work against Shane Watson on Friday when NZ play Australia). Kenya were simply outclassed in every way
Sri Lanka beat Canada by 210 runs with the most quiet but also the most ruthless display
Assuming that Australia post a large total tonight and then blast out the Zimbabwe batsmen, New Zealand will be the only team to not have given their top-order a good work around, which will be my largest fear going forward
Well that's it from here and I hope you join me again
It's goodbye for now
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