Now that the general elections are done - and all that remains is to match the results of the exit polls with the actual results this week - the country is ready for another important question. Will India win the World Cup?
Ever since 1987 and for the seven World Cups that followed, Indians have left the shores of the country (or remained as hosts) as one of the favourites if not the top favourite. Yet they have delivered just once, in 2011.
Since only one team can win, and there are perhaps four teams good enough to win in any given year, that means there have been 28 under-achievers in that period.
Top of the list is probably South Africa, who have often had the team to make it after their debut in 1992, but have somehow managed to foul things up.
Unfair tag
It has earned them the tag of chokers, which is unfair, but considering they have been ranked World No. 1 (they go into this World Cup as No. 3 behind England and India), they have been the biggest disappointment in recent years.
Among teams that have consistently disappointed, England must rank just behind South Africa. They have had more experience in the format than the rest, they have played at home four times before this, and yet have managed to look ordinary despite twice making the final.
Both times they lost to better teams, but that is little consolation. England have tended to be a couple of steps behind state-of-the-art, but this World Cup, under the Irish-born Eoin Morgan might change all that.
When Australia first won in 1987, they weren’t the best team in the competition, nor were Sri Lanka when they came through in 1996. In between, when Pakistan won, they didn’t start off as the best team either.
In the 1990s, South Africa began each tournament with a flourish, winning in a manner suggesting a place in the final was a formality, but they never did get that far.
Too much too early
In 1992, led by the late Martin Crowe, New Zealand were the most creative team in the tournament, and they began by defeating the defending champions. Yet, it was too much too early. In 2011, India seldom inspired confidence in the early stages, their fielding in particular threatening to take them out of the tournament.
For India of 2019, there are many lessons here. It doesn’t matter whether you are the best team or not. World rankings do not really matter when the format is everybody plays everybody else once and the top four teams go through to the semifinals.
Teams that begin with a bang and threaten to overrun the competition do not always make it to the final. World Cups have been won by teams that begin slowly, gathering confidence as they go along, perhaps taking in a defeat or two which point to the weaknesses which are then corrected in the later stages.
Sometimes one match in the middle can make the difference; in 2011 India were a different team after they beat Australia, and even their fielding standards shot up.
Unfortunately for the teams in this World Cup, such observations culled from the experience of previous World Cups do little more than act as consolations when things are going badly. To convert post-tournament interpretations into pre-tournament strategies is impossible.
In hindsight, Australia’s three-in-a-row from 1999 seems inevitable, but from the other end of history it wasn’t so. The West Indies, the greatest one-day team in the early years of the World Cup, were defeated in 1983 when they were head and shoulders above everybody else.
Significant win
India’s win that year is probably the most significant in the history of the tournament for the manner in which it changed world cricket thanks to the game’s biggest audience in the region, and soon, substantial disposable income.
At the other end of the scale, which are the teams that have consistently performed above themselves? New Zealand have been in more semifinals than any other team, but except for 2015 haven’t progressed beyond that.
Last time they were everybody’s second favourite team both for their game and their manifest enjoyment of it as well as their behaviour on-field. It would have been a reminder, had they won, that nice guys sometimes finish first.
The standard answer to the India question is that if they make it to the semifinals, then it becomes anybody’s game. The same obviously applies to the other potential semifinalists. India’s top three batsmen, the top three bowlers and the wicketkeeper are world class and battle-ready. But it is the other four who might decide their fate if the going gets tough.
India have played safe in their team selection, which is like England of old. They lacked the confidence to pick an outlier who could turn a crucial game, as Rishabh Pant might have done.
Sometimes, in cricket, as in politics, a little instability is not such a bad thing. It keeps everyone on his toes.
