World Cup '07 Bhavishya-Vani

The Mega Cricketing event of the year will be commencing tommorow- can't wait for the action to start !

I will try to make some predictions on paper (err ... on keyboard) before the event begins. Time will tell how these predictions pan out in the long run. :)

In my opinion, this will be the most open world cup ever. Since the Australian team has been showing signs of vulnerability for the first time in many years, there have emerged plenty of contenders to challenge the Aussies. India, Sri Lanka and Pakistan should be able to do well in the West Indian conditions, while England and New Zealand have a new found confidence after beating Australia. A Brian Lara led West Indies, playing at home should also be a very dangerous team to come across - especially if Lara is on song.

Lets make this interesting by rating each team by how likely I think they are to win the world cup. In theory this approach should be a much safer approach then predicting one outright winner.

My Predictions for the Teams to Win the World Cup:

Australia -------------- 1/3
India ------------------ 1/3.5
Sri Lanka ------------- 1/5
South Africa: --------- 1/5.5
West Indies: ---------- 1/6
England: -------------- 1/7
Pakistan: -------------- 1/7
New Zealand: --------- 1/7.5
Zimbabwe ------------- 1/800
Bangladesh ------------ 1/1000
Kenya ------------------ 1/Inf
Netherlands ----------- 1/Inf
Scotland --------------- 1/Inf
Ireland ----------------- 1/Inf
Bermuda --------------- 1/Inf
Canada ----------------- 1/Inf

I will also be more adventurous and try to predict the performances of "my" team for the tournament - Team India. I will try to guess which players will do well, by putting numbers for their batting/bowling averages for World Cup' 07. At the end of the tournament, I can look back and see how close I was to predicting the fortunes of my favorite players .

So here is team India, and I have rated each player for what I think will be the batting average and a bowling average of that player for WC '07.

My Predictions for Player Performances :

Rahul Dravid Batting: 55 Bowling: NA

Sachin Tendulkar Batting: 60 Bowling: 45	Sourav Ganguly Batting: 50 Bowling: 40
Ajit Agarkar Batting: 10 Bowling: 25	Virender Sehwag Batting: 25 Bowling: 40
Harbhajan Singh Batting: 15 Bowling: 30	Zaheer Khan Batting: 10 Bowling: 27
MS Dhoni Batting: 40 Bowling: NA	S Sreesanth Batting: 5 Bowling: 30
Dinesh Karthik Batting: 25 Bowling: NA	Robin Uthappa Batting: 35 Bowling: NA

Anil Kumble Batting: 10 Bowling: 28

Yuvraj Singh Batting: 35 Bowling: 40

Irfan Pathan Batting: 20 Bowling: 30

Munaf Patel Batting: 10 Bowling: 24

Pictures Courtesy - http://cricketworldcup.indya.com

And Last, but not the least - I will also try to stick my head out and pick one player from each of the major contenders for WC' 07. These are the players that I think would be the most dangerous/valuable players for each team ( be it due to their batting/ bowling/ fielding/ captaincy/ experience/ .... ). Ultimately - I deem that a great WC '07 for any of these players could lead to that particular country doing very well in the tournament.

Here are my picks for valuable players :

Australia ------------- R. Ponting
India ----------------- S. Tendulkar
Sri Lanka ------------ S. Jayasurya
South Africa --------- G. Smith
West Indies ---------- B. Lara
England -------------- K. Pieterson
Pakistan -------------- Inzamam. Haq
New Zealand --------- S. Fleming


Let the games begin ! Go India !

UPDATE: results