400-plus scores - what do they foretell about the 2011 World Cup

The 2011 Cricket World Cup, scheduled to start in February, is just about an year away. The cup is going to be played in the subcontinent on pitches in Sri Lanka, Bangladesh & India. Spread over 6 weeks, this is going to be a long & tough tournament, where defending team Australia would be trying to go beyond their hattrick of wins against others. They have defeated 3 subcontinent teams in 3 World Cup Finals – Pakistan in 1999, India in 2003 & Sri Lanka in 2007 – and the fact that this tournament is going to be held in the subcontinent is going to be worrisome for the defending champs.

I think the task is pretty difficult, given that Australia is going to be without some of their biggest heroes of their past wins. But even more so, given the emergence of the Pakistan, Sri Lanka & India teams as extremely strong contenders. A view of what is going to be on offer were visible yesterday in the First ODI between India & Sri Lanka at Rajkot. I’d love to use the phrase “what a match”, except that I am speechless!

Only the second instance of a 400-plus score in both innings in the history of one day cricket. Reminded me, and I am sure everyone else, of the first such match, played between Australia & South Africa, where Australia scored 434/4 to set a world record, and found them on the losing side and robbed of their record 3½ hours later when South Africa pulled out a hare from the hat to score 438/9 with a ball to spare, at Johannesburg on 12th March, 2006. And much like that match, it seemed that the maximum runs record that India had created on Indian soil would be erased effortlessly by Sri Lanka. In fact, they were on the chase till the 48th over, at the end of which they required 15 runs with 5 wickets to spare. Having scored at over 8 runs for the first 48 over, and being ahead of the asking rate, how they could not get 7.5 runs/over in the last 2 overs, and how they lost from there foxes me. Despite being an Indian fan who was cheering all the way for India, I feel for the Sri Lankans and my heart goes out to them. At the end, the only consolation is in saying, “Very well played guys; with 400-plus to chase, you made a match out of what appeared to be a hopeless situation even before you started your batting innings.”

400-plus – what does it mean really, and how often has it happened? Incidentally, all 400-plus scores have come in the 21st century. The first instance being Australia in the match mentioned earlier, and the second instance being South Africa in the very same match. A few months later, the third instance was on 4th July, 2006, Sri Lanka broke the world record by scoring 443/9 against Netherlands at Amstelveen. That is the standing record till now. Other than that, both Sri Lanka & South Africa have one more 400-plus, India have 2, and New Zealand has one. So, in all, there are 8 occasions of such instances – all within the last 4 years. some of them have been hit against minnows, but half of them are against extremely strong oppositions – 1 against South Africa, Australia, Sri Lanka & India. Is this where ODI cricket is headed, where even 400-plus may be a par score? One doesn’t know, but numbers do have a story to tell.

If one looks at the highest 25 innings in ODIs ever, 19 of them are in 2000s, and incidentally, every single one of them from 2005 onwards. If one expands this to look at innings of 350 and more, we get 44 such innings. Incidentally, every single of those 19 additional innings were in the 2000s! Does this tell us a story? Sure, it does, and you don’t need to be a rocket scientist to work out that team aggression (or batting aggression, if one may say so more correctly) has really peaked in the 21st century. At the top of this order now are India with 13, followed by South Africa with 9, Australia with 7, New Zealand & Sri Lanka with 4 each, Pakistan with 3, England with 2 and West Indies & Zimbabwe with 1 each.

So, I guess that the next world cup is going to be a very exciting one for everyone, and one-day cricket, if it keeps going vertical, has its place despite T20s. For it offers the thrill of the unknown like never before. Because if a team has scored 200-plus in T20s, we still believe it is chaseable. But a 400-plus in 50 overs? I’d still like to believe that there is a huge element of doubt there. And that element of doubt along with the subcontinental teams’ abilities to knock up huge scores, coupled with the batting-feast supporting wickets are going to make it some task for Australia to retain the crown.