Coming home

On team selection,home advantage,and why this World Cup matters.

A month to the cricket World Cup,we are slowly beginning to realise much rides on this iteration of the championship. It isnt just that the Australian stranglehold looks breakable for the first time since Steve Waughs men,backs to the wall halfway through the group stage in 1999,had to win every match to lift the Cup and did. It isnt just that it will be Sachin Tendulkars sixth and last attempt to push India to the title. It is more than that: it is a last chance for the 50-over format to demonstrate to its 20-over upstart cousin that real cricket requires at least a day to play. In order to do that,the Cup will have to hold interest and what a hard task that will be,given that the ICC has chosen to reprise the failed format from four years ago,with a month of near-meaningless group games against doughty opponents like Canada,

before 11 days of real action,when the knock-out stages begin.

Not that the group games are always near-meaningless,as Team India,2007 Edition,could have told you,after Bangladesh knocked them out. Or Team Pakistan the same year,who simultaneously were unceremoniously dumped out by an inspired team of Irish part-timers. Which brings us to the second way in which the Cup could retain interest: by ensuring that the home team,for once,does well. Unlike the football World Cup,which has a decided home advantage nine of the 15 nations that have hosted or co-hosted the FIFA World Cup have gone furthest on home soil,most notably South Korea in its amazing 2002 run the ICC World Cup has only once been won by a co-host,Sri Lankas upset in 1996. An odd record for a sport more dependent on local conditions than most.

Indias team have been,for a while,tough to beat at home. The 15 that the selectors have picked contain practically no surprises except for the decision to go with an extra reserve spinner instead ofa reserve pacer and each one of those picked will have a certain confidence about his abilities on Indias tracks. Still,it might be useful for them to look at previous confident hosts and wonder what went wrong.