Lovely West Indies in Super 8!

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West Indies vs Pakistan. The cup opener :

Quite similar to what Windies did in 2003 cup opener against South Africa, they beat Pakistan convincingly at Sabina Park. The opener ended up like a poem for hosts. They beat a good team and that must be providing a good confidence to move on and sail through super 8.

Windies are in super 8 I must say as neither Ireland nor Zimbabwe can provide any upsets. Pakistan will aim for a win against Zimbabwe and their outing against Ireland should be tough one. Based on how Irish played against South Africa in the warm up game.

Not a great opening by Gayle and Chanderpaul. Gayle went out very cheaply, but Sarwan and Chanderpaul put the innings together off to a good start. Chanderpaul and Sarwan followed by Samuels and Lara played very well to put the windies in good shape.

Earlier Pakistan skipper won the toss and elected to field for some reason. Probably he had WI-India warm up match in mind and thought he can bowl the opponents over quickly. The match started early at 9:30 to provide a good condition for bowlers.

Pakistan fielding was not so good, Younis dropped Sarwan on his first ball faced, a costly drop! Danish played his part, he even threw the ball over the boundry after fielding and gave away free stuff!

Sarvan played beautifully, his sugar sweet cover drives and on drives. I am watching him for the first time on tv, looks very strong (9 hundreds in tests and 3 in odis). But the best out of the bunch was Marlon Samuels. Beautiful lifts against Danish. Samuels made 63. Dwayne Smith made a quickfire 32. It was his innings partially helped him to get man of the match award.

Windies made 241 at the end of 50 overs for 9 wickets down. Nice score indeed with the given conditions... A competitive score to defend against.

Pakistan started with losing Imran on the third ball and Younis during fouth over. Then onwards, wickets kept falling at regular intervals. Shoaib made 62 with others did not even tried to match him...

A good opening for west indies, should sail forward easily. With the kind of display they put together today, they should sail into semi finals.

Tournament Guide:

The whole show will be up for entertainment at four locations to start with.

The warmup matches were played at :

Kingstown, St Vincent

St Augustine, Trinidad

Bridgetown, Barbados

Trelawny, Jamaica

More on wamup matches on a separate post...

The first round will be played in four locations, one for each group. There will be 6 games for each group as the group members play against each other.

Basseterre, St Kitts

Port of Spain, Trinidad

Gros Islet, St Lucia

Kingston, Jamaica.

The gods from supernatural cricketing countries will play with poor and emerging babyrickters. The outcome of nearly 16 out of 24 games at this stage can be predicted so easily by anyone who knows the game of cricket. The remaining 8 games is too tough to call at this time. Four of them will be between gods playing against each other and remaining four of them will be between minnows and these games will be so unnoticed, they even need not have to play them!

This leaves only four games to be noticed, talked about, gossipped, and whatever by everyone. These are the games between better cricket teams, and for someone who is very busy at work, here is a little guide:

First of such a match will be on opening day (13 mar)! West Indies will play Pakistan. And you have to wait three three three days for the next one (16 mar): England playing New Zealand. After really agonizing sevendays, you will see the next important match (23 mar): India playing Sri Lanka. After a couple of days (24 mar) Australia will play South Africa. Even after this match, for some crazy reason, two more first round matches will be played for someone's entertainment!

There will be plenty of time to eat and wash and sleep during this phase of the tournament. Like a mind blowing calm before the heavy storm!

More on first round matches on a separate post...

Super eight matches will be played at :

The first 12 super eight matches will be at St Peter's, Antigua and Providence, Guyana.

Remaining 12 matches at Grenada and Kensington Oval, Barbados

Super eight matches will be between quality cricket playing teams for sure. Other eight teams would be relieved by the fact that they need not have to be humiliated anymore, laughed at or even felt sorry about the number of runs scored or number of wickets taken or exercises during fielding to reduce...... whatever.

Semi finals will be played at Sabina Park, Jamaica and St. Lucia on 24th and 25th April.

There are several predictions on who will be in the semi finals. I suspect australia and south africa be definetely in. The other two teams can be anybody's guess.

And Final match will be at Kensington Oval, Barbados on 28th.

Welcome to the coverage of Cricket Worldcup 2007!

It has been four long years, the baby is back again. The wonder of sporting entertaining will live upto its expectation for a two month long timeframe, probably too much even die hard fan. In these columns I will write about happenings from windies as quickly as possible. I promise you will smile and laugh even if your favourite team lost on that day.

Get on the bus, lets cruise over to the carribean.