Tags:
Journalism of Courage
Who will win the cricket World Cup? That is the question that is haunting the cricket playing world,especially cricket-crazy Indian fans,whose team crashed out in a humiliating manner during the 2007 event under the controversial leadership mix of Greg Chappell and Sourav Ganguly.
To make things a little easier on the fans,The Indian Express online poll asked the surfers about the Cup winning chances of India,Pakistan,Australia,England and Sri Lanka.
The news that we now have to report is that India has emerged the overwhelming favourite to win the World Cup trophy.
But worryingly for Indian fans,their arch rival Pakistan has emerged as the team most likely to challenge Team India for the trophy.
While India received 59% of the votes,Pakistan polled 21%,while in the also-ran category were Australia and Sri Lanka (7% each) and England (4%).
The most pressing factors that point towards an Indian victory are the presence of the best coach in the world in the form of Gary Kirsten,the inclusion of Sachin Tendulkar who is inarguably the best ODI batsman in the history of the game,a captain who has not done anything wrong since he took over the team in the form of MS Dhoni,and the presence of a string of young guys who are in fine and aggressive form and most important,confident of their abilities to trample rough shod over their rivals.
In contrast,most other teams have stale looking line-ups and captains who do not command the respect of their men barring resurgent England’s Andy Strauss. Pakistan of course,is nowhere in this issue as the team at the moment is leaderless as the POCB has not appointed one.
Shahid Afridi,if he is anointed skipper,does not really command the allegiance of his players,while the team itself has just emerged from a number of scams,including match-fixing,spot-fixing,and ball-tampering.
Cheers,India?
