Sri Lanka beat Afghanistan today in a rain-affected, low-scoring thriller, the third exciting game in a row after a dull start to the tournament. The quality of the cricket on both sides was decidedly less than stellar but Afghanistan was playing better for most of the game until their batting collapsed towards the end. Although Sri Lanka is technically the team I should support, given that I was born in the country and such tribal allegiances tend to determine whom one cheers for, I actually wished that Afghanistan had won. Beating a top ten Test match team for the first time in a World Cup match would have been an enormous boost to that war-torn country’s morale.
Sri Lanka meanwhile has been going through a woeful period, especially in the shorter forms of the game, and a loss to the lowest-ranked Afghanistan team would have been depressing for them but perhaps the shock that the Sri Lankan cricket authorities needed to realize that they had to shake things up in their administration, selection, and coaching. The only bright spot is that their current team captain Dimuth Karunaratne, appointed after a series of rapid-fire changes in the captaincy, is leading by example, batting and fielding well. It now requires his teammates, especially the batters, to step up.
So now we go on to tomorrow’s matches where India plays South Africa and Bangladesh plays New Zealand. Both games should be close. India has to be favored over the talented but underperforming South African team that has already lost twice and is furthered hampered by their ace fast bowler Dale Steyn being ruled out of the rest of the tournament because of a shoulder injury. New Zealand is favored to beat Bangladesh but the latter team has been surging, as seen in their upset win over South Africa.
I had to follow most of the game on the Grauniad’s OBO, and was only able to catch the last few overs, starting just a bit before the Afghanistan batting collapse. At that point they were in with quite a decent chance. I was also hoping they’d win, but such was not to be… The crowd seemed rather small, but both sets of supporters were engaged and involved, with plenty of shouting, banging drums &tc, and clearly enjoying the event (if not the rain).
Yessssss. I was cheering for Afghans too, and was quite disappointed when 6th wicket fell.
Tomorrow, I will be cheering for SA. I root for underdogs or WI or SA….mostly in that order.
Toss seems to have out-sized influence in this tournament so far, where the team batting second is at a disadvantage (pitch slowing down?) provided the team batting first piled up a reasonable score, to take the game to last 10 overs.