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| Sunday, 09 April 2006 |
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World Cup in the West Indies should be closely contested - Bob Woolmer by Ranjan Anandappa The 2007 World Cricket Cup to be held in the West Indies is likely to be one of the closely contested ones to be held in the history, said Bob Woolmer, the former Kent and England player and now Pakistan cricket coach. Bob Woolmer, Ramiz Raja and Kumar Sangakkara were featured in a question and answer session at a cricket chat recently at the launch of the HSBC Cricket Credit Card at the Cinnamon Grand Hotel. "I say this because all the top teams are getting closer together, and seeing Sri Lanka and Australia doing very well, South Africa has done well against Australia, Pakistan did well against Sri Lanka, but fared badly against India, and only a year ago we beat India, and India now has beaten Pakistan, and what I say is all the sides are getting closer together." said Woolmer. "Considering the four top sides that go through, one has got to include Australia, and South Africa too a pretty good side, and the other two places are out for grabs," he said. "But even South Africa, I think, are beatable and it is difficult to predict who will emerge the ultimate winner. At the present time, Australia are the front runners and it should be the closest World Cups tourney to be held for a long, long time," was Woolmer's prediction. Woolmer was impressed over a couple of young Sri Lankan players and said that the young opening batsman Tharanga looks promising, Mahela Jayawardena who played against us in 1995 in the 'A' team matches, has blossomed to be a very fine batsman. Kumar Sangakkara obviously another top performer, and the young chap fast bowler Maharoof looks serious potential. Referring to the recently concluded 400 plus match between Australia and South Africa played in South Africa, which the home team won, Woolmer said that it was fantastic. "Fantastic is a good word, a wonderful game, I hate to be a bowler in those conditions, because we saw the ball being hit to the crowd all the time. It is just a ridiculous game in the sense, we all know in cricket that the 400-barrier was to be broken, but to do it by South Africa and Australia in the same match and break the record is a rare occasion that will happen once in my life and it is one of them," said Woolmer. "Now in one-day cricket, if you play on certain type of pitches, you can actually get 500. With the introduction of the power play you can expect the figure to be higher. So if 250 was a winning score ten years ago ,you get a situation now where 300 is par. When you go to the West Indies, with pretty good pitches there, and I think 300 is not going to be a winning score any more." So you have got a situation where players have to improve their game, and bowlers will have to be stronger mentally to deal with it. Ten overs nought for 50 will be a pretty good performance. When Kumar Sangakkara was asked the strategy for the 2007 World Cup, he said that "At the end of the day one should put in good all-round performances in whatever one does, if you bat right now, with the super sub gone, and the power play still on, the winning targets will definitely go higher, and when you do bowl, you have just a five over adjustment to do, and it forces captains to be more attacking and it can work for you in match situation when the power play is on." "I don't think we should look for anything extra special, or something fantastically new, basics of cricket still holds true. When you go into bat and if you are a batsman you are expected to score runs, and big runs and that's what you should consider your job to be, and when you are a bowler, your job is to bowl good line and length,cut down the runs and pick up wickets if you can. And that whole package is completed by outstanding fielding. That is something that we are concentrating a lot on," said Sangakkara. "It is easy to do well in one discipline ,but you have to make it a total package and that's what we are really concentrating and getting consistency in the side. Having a consistent sixteen with a few new players coming in from time to time, and having a good run that can carry us through," said the Sri Lanka vice captain. Sangakkara, answering another question with regards to the experience he had in Australia, representing a World XI against Australia in a fund-raiser for the 2004 tsunami, he said that the experience was very good, being in the same dressing with some of the greats of the game currently . Although the cricket was not that great, the cricket that we played in the one-dayers and the Test matches were very disappointing, but I don't know whether it is a concept that will ever happen again what we saw, but personally the experience I had in the dressing room, you know, it is good to be a part of something that brought together cricketers from different countries. You tend to have pre-conceived ideas of what a personality is, how people would behave, what their lifestyles are, things like that change very quickly when you spend time with them and get to know them better. To me, those were the important things in playing the game. Not only getting hundreds or taking catches behind the stumps, he said. When asked who was his favourite batsman, Sangakkara said that he had a few "I grew up watching Vivian Richards, who is an absolute master, from Sri Lanka Aravinda de Silva, I think he must be among the greats when it comes to batting even though his record doesn't really justify his talents, Brian Lara is someone I love watching, I'll pay money any day to watch him bat, then you get great batsmen like Rahul Dravid, Sachin Tendulkar, Ricky Ponting, everyone slightly different from the other, but nevertheless very effective, so I don't think I can pick one," he said. I have seen a few clippings of Sir Donald Bradman, and everyone who has
played the game has scored hundreds in excess of 25 or 20 and have higher
averages over 50 which is fantastic. |
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