By Rick Westhead
\nNEW DELHI\u2014India enters cricket\u2019s World Cup with a murderers\u2019 row of batsmen, anchored by the country\u2019s most beloved sportsman, the 5-foot-5 veteran Sachin Tendulkar, a.k.a. \u201cLittle Master.\u201d Australia, led by spin bowler and batsman Ricky Ponting, comes in as the world\u2019s top-rated country in cricket\u2019s 50-overs-a-side format and a swagger \u2014 some say undeserved after some recent losses \u2014 from having won the past three World Cup trophies.
\nSri Lanka is no slouch, either, thanks to a strong batting lineup and the wily skills of veteran Muttiah Muralitharan, an artist at bowling hard, lacquered cricket balls that bounce off the turf at vexing angles. The point is, this year\u2019s cricket World Cup, a 49-match spectacle over the next seven weeks, arguably features the most level playing field since the tournament started in 1975. As an added bonus for its marketers, this may the final World Cup for Tendulkar, Ponting and Muralitharan. Though it won\u2019t register with many North Americans \u2014 player positions such as \u201csilly point\u201d and \u201cshort-square leg\u201d sound like a foreign language even to diehard Canadian sports nuts \u2014 much of the rest of the world will be entranced by cricket\u2019s World Cup. Game telecasts are expected to attract several billion viewers.
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\nThe tournament will be played in three countries, India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, and critics are especially focused on India\u2019s preparations. After a series of fiascos leading up to the Commonwealth Games last September, Indian officials are hoping the World Cup is a chance for redemption.<\/p>\n
World Cup players will be under the glare even off the pitch. Police estimate there will be as much as $10 billion in illegal wagering in India alone over the course of the tournament \u2014 a prediction that excites the country\u2019s many astrologers, who make a living predicting sports scores, and provides angst for both organizers and local law enforcement officials.<\/p>\n
Gambling and corruption are sensitive topics in any sport, but especially so in cricket.<\/p>\n
The game was rocked by a massive match-fixing scandal in 2001, and just last year, three Pakistani star players were banned from the sport for taking bribes to play poorly in a tournament in England. India has ordered its players not to post messages on Twitter on game days, though it\u2019s unclear how that might thwart unscrupulous bookies.<\/p>\n
While India enters as the oddsmakers\u2019 slight favourite, the World Cup has a history of upsets.<\/p>\n
In 1983, India won its first, and only, World Cup, after beginning the tournament as 66-1 outsiders. India had won just a single match during the previous two World Cups in 1975 and 1979 and few experts predicted its victory, a win that would cement cricket as India\u2019s national passion and pastime.<\/p>\n
More recently, at the 2007 World Cup, Ireland, whose cricket federation was headquartered in the same building as the country\u2019s governing body for tug o\u2019 war, managed to beat Pakistan, knocking the fourth-ranked team in the world out of the tournament.<\/p>\n
Canada, whose only World Cup win was over heavily favoured Bangladesh in 2007, enters as a 500-1 longshot and has struggled for respect. In recent months, the Canadian team\u2019s sponsor was a Toronto-area banquet hall.<\/p>\n
\u201cI asked if they could host a dinner for us before we left for the World Cup but found out that the hotel wasn\u2019t even in business,\u201d says Mike Henry, the Canadian team\u2019s manager.<\/p>\n
There have been other hurdles.<\/p>\n
While Reebok was supposed to outfit Canada\u2019s team with four sets of playing shirts and pants, track suits and training tops, supplies still hadn\u2019t arrived only days before Canada\u2019s opening match on Sunday against Sri Lanka.<\/p>\n
Still, playing in a pool alongside Kenya and Zimbabwe, Canada could surprise. With a lineup that\u2019s heavy on South Asian transplants, Canada narrowly lost by 16 runs to England on Wednesday in its final pre-tourney warmup.<\/p>\n
In India, the buzz over the World Cup is surprisingly muted and experts say there several reasons for this.<\/p>\n
Soccer has made huge inroads here over the past few years and is the preferred sport for many young athletes in large urban centres. The English soccer powerhouse Manchester United, for instance, just opened a team-themed restaurant in one of New Delhi\u2019s most affluent neighbourhoods.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s also worry that Indian sports fans are suffering from cricket overload. Imagine if Canada\u2019s hockey team had to suit up for an international tournament each month.<\/p>\n
Cricket\u2019s World Cup finishes on April 2, and less than a week later, the six-week Indian pro cricket league, the IPL, gets underway. When that\u2019s over, India\u2019s national team jets to West India for more than a month for a series of games. After that, from July to September, it\u2019s touring England for a still another series of five-day test and one-day international matches.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Rick Westhead NEW DELHI\u2014India enters cricket\u2019s World Cup with a murderers\u2019 row of batsmen, anchored by the country\u2019s most beloved sportsman, the 5-foot-5 veteran Sachin Tendulkar, a.k.a. \u201cLittle Master.\u201d Australia, led by spin bowler and batsman Ricky Ponting, comes in as the world\u2019s top-rated country in cricket\u2019s 50-overs-a-side format and a swagger \u2014 some […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[10,17],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.canadacricket.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1270"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.canadacricket.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.canadacricket.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadacricket.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadacricket.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1270"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadacricket.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1270\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1271,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadacricket.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1270\/revisions\/1271"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.canadacricket.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1270"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadacricket.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1270"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadacricket.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1270"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}