1999- World Cup of Swing & Super Sixes

The World Cup was back in England without the Prudential tag attached to it. Expectations were high for India since they had won the last World Cup played in England. The gap between the previous one and this one was 3 years , strange but probably ICC did not want a millenium event, most strange. This was a swing country where the Indian pace attack could be a handful with Srinath and Prasad accompanied by some good swing bowlers in Sourav Dada and Robin Singh. ICC was trying out new formats in the form of Super Sixes being introduced for the first time. India was again led by Azhar and had a solid batting line up in Sachin, Sourav followed by Dravid, Azhar , Jadeja and some allrounders in Robin Singh and Anil Kumble with Mongia the keeper not to forget the elegant lazy Sadagopan Ramesh.  Many would remember the pleasing Indian attire of  television friendly blue with yellow birdies if I can call it that.

I was watching the World Cup this time at distant Ambasamudram in southernmost part of India ,England was possibly around a day away from here by flight. Indians may also need to look at the map to locate this  place. These were the days when India was at the mercy of cable operators who would jack up the price of the channel just before a major event , the audience had no choice but to pay. The timings were quite convenient for us to return from office and still manage to watch some decent cricketing action. India losing their first match was becoming common place and they did here as well to South Africa. The match against Srilanka at Taunton was a match to remember, Ramesh was out to Chaminda Vaas and this brought together two great young cricketers in Sourav and Dravid together and they played out of their skins liteally and dismantled the Sri Lankan bowling. I still remember Sourav dancing down the track to hit Muralitharan out of the ground and with Sourav and Rahul scoring big hundreds, the result was a foregone conclusion but the margin was reminiscent of a West Indian victory of the older times.

Tendulkar was forced to take a break due to his father's sudden demise and India played without him against Zimbabwe. Zimbabwe are a team who regularly cause upsets in this format of the game as they did to Australia in 1983 and almost put it past India as well in the Kapil 175 match. The total they scored was just average since 250 was now becoming easily gettable for most teams. Andy Flower, Grant and Neil Johnson were good players and were experienced in these conditions since they were already part of the county circuit. Ramesh got India to a great start and India was cruising towards an easy win when suddenly wickets started tumbling and Olonga was made to look like Glen Mcgrath by the late order. Robin Singh , Srinath and Prasad were all cleaned up in one over and India needing 9 off 2 overs lost by 3 runs. This derailed the momentum somewhat and India had a potential elimination encounter with England which was the best match for me from India's perspective and I still remember the two days on which this match was played, the match was continued from where they left off on the second day. I was back home early again and it was around 4 pm when the match started on the second day. Debhasis Mohanty was amazing and catches were automatically going to Azhar at slip with the batsman nicking almost everything.

India were in the S 6's but were considerably at a disadvantage since Zimbabwe had also qualified and they could only take points of the teams whom they had already played.  The opening match of the S 6s was a disaster,  Australia easily scored 280+ and India had lost almost half their side very early with Glen Mcgrath at his very best.  This match had Jadeja scoring a memorable 100 and his partnership with Robin was entertaining .  Also interesting was all the others made single digit scores ( how many times has this happened before ??). India against New Zealand was another losing match which Roger Twose scored a match winning kock to put India out of the World Cup.

The South Africa against Australia match was a cracker of a contest even better than the final , not before Pakistan had easily put it past New Zealand in the other semi final . Saeed Anwar looking in ominous form made the total look very easy.   SA had done a fantastic job in the first half getting Australia all out for 213 and it was only South Africa who could lose the match.  Kirsten and Gibbs had got a measured start but a constant stream of wickets put the chase under doubt with Warne turning it on.  South Africa were pressing the self destruct button at regular intervals till Klusener had other ideas.  The final wicket was all drama and this mixup was similar to the Raju /Srinath mixup in 1992.  I still remember Allan Donald at the other end and Klusener hitting the ball to cover. BTW , Waugh had brought the entire field up inside the circle and that was courageous captaincy but many will say nothing to lose for Australia ,everything to lose for SA since it was the last wicket.

The final was played at Lords , the mecca of test cricket which had a nice and attractive press box at one side of the ground but nobody expected the final to be as one sided as it was. Abdul Razzaq was promoted to number 3 and didn't make much of a difference to the contest and Pakistan was bowled out for 132. The only hope for Pakistan remained early wickets and Waugh and Gilchrist didnt give Pakistan much of a chance and half way point was reached without much of damage.  Pakistan were regretting the decision of batting first which was in fact the sensible thing to do since in a pressure chase , they would have crumbled anyway.

The take home moments not in the mentioned order were of course the Indian win against Pakistan in the S-6s,  Indian win against Srilanka where our batting was consistently good ,  Indian win against England fashioned by good quality swing bowling, South Africa getting the chokers tag after the Klusener Donald mixup, Australian professionalism at its best in the tied match and clinical victory in the final.  The pinch hitting concept was not too evident here since the swinging ball made the batsman circumspect. Zimbabwe cricket was revitalised by their victory against India and the tailenders had made Olonga a household Indian name to remember and hate.