THE knockouts are upon us and the real World Cup starts now. All this while, teams could fiddle with their line-ups, change the batting order, shuffle their bowlers around knowing that there was another game tomorrow or next week. They now know there is no game ahead if they lose. They will be on the first available flight back home if they lose, so they have to get everything right, from the final playing eleven, to who bats where, to who bowls to which batsman with what sort of field placement.

There won’t be too many days in between the matches now either as they were in the qualifying stage. Any injuries or niggles to important players will have to be treated on an emergency basis to get that player fit and firing on all cylinders for nothing less will do. It’s the World Cup after all and it comes every four years.

South Africa take on Sri Lanka in the first quarter-final at the Sydney Cricket Ground on Wednesday. The Proteas have a star cast that knows that this could well be their last World Cup, and they will want to erase the memories of earlier failures where they were labelled ‘chokers’. It’s a title they do not like, they positively hate it, and the only way they can get rid of it is by winning the cup this time around.

Nothing short of that will erase it or delete it from the cricketing vocabulary when future discussions take place about the South African team’s chances in an ICC tournament.

They have won four games with ease and they have lost to two major cricketing nations, India and Pakistan, in the group stage.

Both those games were lost while they were batting second. In fact, if one looks at the history of South African cricket since its return to international arena, and especially in the World Cup, it is while chasing targets, even if they are small as in the last World Cup against New Zealand, that the South Africans are seen to panic if they don’t get off to a good start.

Sri Lanka will thus want to bat first, and in the kind of form that Tillakaratne Dilshan and Kumar Sangakkara are in, they will expect to put up a good total even though they will be confronting Dale Steyn, Morne Morkel and company. That game should set the tone for the other quarter-final battles.

India take on neighbours Bangladesh who have batted quite superbly in this edition of the tournament. Like India, Bangladesh also have quality spinners, and if the pitch breaks up a bit then the team batting second will not find it easy.

India’s concerns are mainly with their batting, with only Dhawan, Kohli, Raina and Dhoni being consistent. The Bangladesh batsmen play spin comfortably, so the new ball with Shami and Yadav will be a crucial part of the game. Mohit Sharma has been the best first change bowler in the tournament by far with the clever mixing of speeds.

India will have the edge as they have finished on a high winning all their matches in the group and they will want to keep the winning rhythm going.

By Special Arrangement for Dawn

Published in Dawn March 17th , 2015

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