Cricket world cup

In 9 days time the Cricket world cup gets under way, unlike it's footballing counterpart it will not capture the imagination, but will almost certainly end in disaster and disappointment. In this post I will have a close look at the England squad and predict where we will fail.

Looking at the squad it would appear we are a batsmen short. If any of the top 6 suffers an injury we may have to endure the rather unappealing prospect of Luke Wright being played as a specialist batsmen. Dear God no! It is also unclear as yet as to who will be opening the batting with Strauss. An idea that hardly inspires confidence at this stage of proceedings. In the recent Commonwealth Bank series Steve Davies started in the role and was then not named in the world cup squad at all. Matt Prior also played at the top of the order but was less than impressive. Prior, Trott, Bell and Bopara have all been mentioned. My personal preference would be Bell. Bell is seemingly in the form of his life and the more overs he spends at the crease the better. I fear England may well continue with the Prior experiment under the misguided notion that he is a useful pinch hitter. Both Strauss and Bell score quickly enough  and are good enough to utilize the initial power play and give England a solid platform.

On paper England have a strong batting line up. But they need to start converting starts into hundreds. Pretty and  quickly accumulated 60's and 70's are all well and good but will not win matches against the big boys.

The bowling make up throws up even more issues, with Broad, Bresnan, Shazad and Swann all currently recovering from Injuries England have taken the unprecedented step of asking Chris Tremlett to travel with the squad as a 16th man. Although some will have you believe that this is a sensible move, to me it just says that we are expecting one of the injured quartet not to make it or brake down at some stage. You have to question the wisdom of naming so many players carrying niggles in the squad. England's recent selection policy suggests that they will only pick 4 specialist bowlers. Leaving 10 overs a game to be bowled between a combination of Collingwood, Trott, Bopara and Pieterson. If one of the front line bowlers does break down mid-game the prospect of getting 15-20 overs from those 4 is hardly re-assuring.

My final concern is the 2nd spinner option. Swann is unquestionably one of the best spinners in the world currently but the back up options are less inspiring to say the least. Yardy has been relatively successful in T20 but is likely to be targeted in this form of the game. He is a good solid county player but lacks the quality to test the top players at this level. Tredwell would be my preferred option as he is a better thinking bowler with more variation but recent evidence suggests that Yardy will get the nod.

I expect England to beat Holland comfortably in the opening game. They will have too much quality for Ireland. The West Indies and Bangladesh are both very beatable but I wouldn't be surprised to see England come unstuck against one of them. India who are a sold unit, although lacking a little in the bowling department, should have enough to see England off and barring an inspired Pietersen performance I expect South Africa to triumph in the meeting between the sides.
England should progress through the group stage with a little to spare. Like a lot of these competitions  once a team gets on a roll and has momentum they can be difficult to beat if England manage that they could upset the odd's although common sense says it is unlikely.

South Africa and India are the bookies favorites and with good reason. Although I think both Sri Lanka and Australia have a good chance.

It is shaping up to be a fascinating world cup. I for one cannot wait for it to start.

I will be spending 6 weeks glued to the team at www.testmatchsofa.com and loving every moment.