World Cup 2011 - Fight for supremacy between oriental artistry and molded perfection

The world cup returns to the sub continent after a gap of 14 years. This will be a world cup which will see a battle between the artistry of sub continent teams and the laptop based analytical approach. Over the years teams like South Africa and Australia have used the latter technique to perfection. By analyzing the strengths and weaknesses of each opposition player methodically, they tried adapting their game accordingly. It has yielded its own results. What that approach didn’t teach them, however was how to react in pressure situations, how to stay calm in crunch games and how to churn out class players year after year. South Africa have never won the world cup. The closest they came was reaching the semi finals. Australia, though they have a record to die for in world cup history, are fast realizing that cricketers can’t be churned out of laptops. However strong the lower level systems are, it finally boils down to the skills of the individual players, their perseverance and discipline and spotting those players early. All the success they achieved was not just due to the systems they had in place at domestic level, but because of a few individual players, all of who played together for a large part of their careers.

This is where the sub continent teams like India, Sri Lanka and Pakistan had been different. Lot of people described that watching some players from these countries was like watching a painter with a brush in hand. Today, these teams too have realized the importance of using analysis before games. But I don’t think these analyses really matter to players like Virendar Sehwag when they go out on to the field. So, players from these nations still are artistes. When you see Mahela Jayawardene you recall the word ‘touch artiste’ very much associated with tennis players like Ramesh Krishnan, for whom brute force was never an option. While one finds both types of players on either side of this divide (A Shoiab Akhtar in the mould of Brett Lee and Shaun Tait, A Graham Swann with fine spin skills) the divide itself is pretty much present and clear.

So, as the curtain rises for the start of the World Cup, this battle between artistic finesse and molded perfection is renewed. The pitches suiting spin bowling will surely test players from outside the sub continent. Whichever team adapts quickly to the grounds and conditions will come close to entering the last four. But one thing that can be assured is total entertainment for all cricket loving fans the world over. Let the entertainment begin!!!