First a brief history lesson: not since the West Indies beat England by 92 runs in the 1979 final have the favourites won the World Cup. And secondly, no team has won the World Cup on its own soil.
Yes, I know Sri Lanka won the 1996 World Cup as co-hosts, but they played the final in Lahore, which is the equivalent of South Africa turning up in Nairobi for the final.
With this in mind, then, shouldn’t we write off the prospects of Australia and South Africa? Perhaps, perhaps not. What does seem certain about the 2003 World Cup is that if any side other than the two teams mentioned above is to win one-day cricket’s greatest prize, they will have to beat either Australia or South Africa or, more probably, both, on their way to lifting the trophy.
The point is that one-day cricket comes with a built-in element of uncertainty. If anything, it seems to help teams who enter the tournament with little form or pedigree and, perhaps most importantly, unburdened by the weight of expectation.
In 1992 Australia went into the World Cup as red-hot favourites, hosts and reigning champions. They lost their first match to New Zealand, their second to South Africa and eventually failed even to make the semifinals because Pakistan managed to burgle a point from a washed-out game against England. Pakistan had been bowled out for just 74, but England batted for only eight overs before it poured down. And in Adelaide, of all places.
Even so, if you were to pick finalists for this edition of the World Cup, you’d have to go for Australia as the most probable winners. Notwithstanding the International Cricket Council table, they are the best Test team in the world, and they wiped the floor with South Africa in the one-day games on South African soil less than a year ago.
But there remains just a faint suspicion that for all their preeminence in Test cricket, Australia aren’t quite so formidable as a one-day unit. The most obvious difference in the two Australian teams is the absence of Steve Waugh from the one-day side. In dismissing Waugh as a one-day player, Australia followed established practice (much the same happened to Mark Taylor before Waugh), but other teams and other countries might have taken a different view.
Earlier this week Imran Khan suggested that Australia would miss Waugh at the World Cup, and he should know. If Imran had been Australian, he probably wouldn’t have made the 1992 World Cup, but he belied his fading powers to bully and badger Pakistan to triumph.
Australia believe they can do without Waugh. We shall see. None of this is to suggest that Ricky Ponting hasn’t got a hope. He is a wonderful cricketer, tough and unsentimental in the Australian fashion, but he hasn’t yet had to deal with a crisis or the type of pressure that, inevitably, seemed to dredge just a little more out of Waugh.
It also seems to be the case that without all-rounders of the quality of Shaun Pollock and Jacques Kallis, Australia seem to be a little thin in the middle. They are particularly strong at the top of the batting order and they have four of the best bowlers in the modern game, but between these two extremes there’s a hint of uncertainty. For instance, you wouldn’t expect any South African all-rounder to get himself stumped as he sought to leave a ball, as happened to Andrew Symonds the other day.
The real key, though, lies at the top of the Australian batting order. Let Adam Gilchrist and Mattie Hayden get away, and they’ll murder you. Nip a couple out early, though, and the picture changes. Again, they won’t have a Steve Waugh this time around.
Just one more thing about the Australians, and that is how they have built up to this World Cup. Most teams have given themselves at least a short break before coming to South Africa, but Australia (and England) are still at it. They’ve had a number of injuries to key players and they’ve endured a particularly full summer, which included a detour to Sharjah for Test matches against Pakistan. What we don’t know at this stage is whether they will be at the peak of their form or just slipping over the other side.
South Africa, you’d have to say, couldn’t have hoped for a more convincing lead-in to the tournament. Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Pakistan were all dispatched in short order as Shaun Pollock’s team, on the face of it anyway, put the traumas of last summer behind them. They’ve been up in the Drakensberg this week, banging drums and falling into rivers, and the break from cricket might take them into the World Cup fully refreshed. What we don’t know, though, is how this refurbished South African team will cope with pressure.
That’s the real key and, like it or not, it has been Australia’s ability to stare South Africa down in virtually every meaningful contest since readmission that has been the difference between the two sides. The question remains whether deep down inside themselves the South Africans really believe they can beat Australia?
There will be other challenging teams at this World Cup. The West Indies, for instance, should provide South Africa with a particularly testing opening match. It will also be a tournament in which, on batsmen-friendly wickets, the teams with the best-disciplined attacks prevail.
Personally, I fancy New Zealand and, for reasons I can’t really explain, India also to reach the semifinals.
But the more you look at it, the more likely it seems to come down to one of Australia or South Africa. Sometimes you just have to forget about history.