Expert Blog

Looking ahead to the 2011 World Cup

Football fever may be in the air but our expert is already looking forward to the 2011 Cricket World Cup action. Take a look at his predictions!

In a little under eight months from now, the 2011 World Cup gets underway with India taking on Bangladesh in Dhaka. The format for the tournament has been revised and it’s similar to the 1996 World Cup - two groups of seven each (the ‘96 edition had six each) with four teams making it to the quarter-finals. This means each side gets to play at least six matches, which hedges against the possibility of a highly followed team like India getting knocked out early leading to poor viewership for latter stages.

While there’s still some time to go, we decided to get a headstart and identify the early favourites for the tournament. With a little bit of analysis, we performed what I like to call structured crystal ball gazing. We looked at ODI performances over the past two years, and broke it down across 6 month periods. We only looked at matches that ended in a result and ignored abandoned/no result matches. Here’s how the teams stacked up:

 

Australia have been the most successful team over the past two years, but unlike previous World Cups, the gap between the top 6 teams leading into the tournament is not that large. India has been the most consistent team across the time spans, without ever dipping below 56%. Pakistan have predictably been the most unpredictable going from 100% to 13% (albeit their 100% record between July and Dec 08 accounted for only 5 matches).

England looks like a team that’s gaining momentum and could be a force to reckon with in the 2011 World Cup. The graph below outlines how the performance of four representative teams has fluctuated - India has been the most consistent, England is on the rise, Pakistan on the decline while Australia has been the most successful overall with crests and troughs.

While past World Cups have thrown up some surprises, form coming into the tournament tends to be a significant indicator of success. If the World Cup started today, the English cricket team would get better odds than their football counterparts did during the FIFA World Cup. Watch out for the Barmy Army, but also keep an eye on the consistent Indians, South Africans and Sri Lankans and defending champs Australia.

Let’s not leave it at that- I’m going to put a stick in the ground and come up with some early predictions. My Group A picks (in order) Australia, Sri Lanka, New Zealand and Pakistan with Kenya, Canada and Zimbabwe missing out. Group B - India, England, South Africa and Bangladesh with the West Indies, Ireland and the Netherlands missing out, though look for the Irish to pull off an upset or two.

Given the way the pairings are laid out right now, my picks lead to Australia-South Africa and Sri Lanka-Bangladesh quarter-finals in the top half of the draw and India-New Zealand and England-Pakistan matches in the bottom, though some shuffling could end up in a mouth-watering India-Pakistan quarter-final. Going by the quarter-finals laid out, we could get a 2007 final repeat of Australia-Sri Lanka in the first semi and India-England in the second. After that, it’s anybody’s guess. I’ll go with an India-Sri Lanka final, with an opportunity for the Men in Blue to exorcise the ghosts of Eden Gardens and have Sachin win his first World Cup at his home ground in Mumbai. Then again, if England continues to ride their wave of good form, they could repeat their 2011 T20 magic.