How upbeat are you now about India's chances?

[Jersey #10]

I am not even watching the next game and would like to refrain from voting as I don't want to jinx our slim chances

[Praveen M]

If India can't win then Aussies.

noB-> way

[Ravi.]

England in trouble now.

[rkt.india]

Speaking for myself, the team has never exuded confidence in me in tournaments. I would still back them to win 9/10 bilateral series. But the dynamics of a tournament are very different, specially this one which involves 3 KO matches. I just can't see how we will win them. Whichever team does would at some point need awesome performances from the second rung players. When I look at the Indian team I see a huge gulf between our first and second rung. Other teams do not have the quality of our first rung, but their second rung is better than ours. Over a 5 match series the top rung will do enough to win, but in a 3 match KO guys like Nehra would need to pull world class performances at some point. Possible, but not probable.

Yeah absolutely..same thing i had written in one other thread

[bhajjirulez]

I think West Indies is going to beat india in next match...let keep our fingers crossed this not happenin

[zen]

The pendulum keeps swinging. I think it is more of a swing for those who thought Ind would just blast the oppononents. This is WC w/ every team out there to win it. There is no free lunch on offer. Ind will have to fight it out in every game to triumph. Moving into the KO, Ind chance in every game is 50:50 just like the other team. That's the same of every KO game. To be able to win 3 KO games in a row, a team needs to have the ability to deliver both with the bat and the ball. In a bilateral series, you can win 3 out of 5 games based on your batting but in KO you need to get the balance right. The problem w/ Ind is that we pick our team as if we are playing a bilateral series. This could even work in group games as you can win 3-4 games out of 6 based on batting firing, other team doing badly on the day and so on, and we end up in QF. But in KO, if you lose, you pack your bags. Can't come to tomorrow to give another shot to your batting :P We need to get our balance right. Ten and Zak will make Ind competitive but we need consistent performances from others to deliver the KO punch. KO is mostly abt handling pressure. Our strategy should be simple. Instead of going out there to blast the opposition in every game and thus putting ourselevs under pressure and may ending up short, we need to bat sensibly in such a way that the top 4 get us to around 220-250 and then the rest take it from their to get us past 300 or more. In pressure games, 300-320 should be a good total, esp if we can pick up a few wkts early on. When bowling, we will have to pick up wkts. In that process if we give a few runs so be it. We don't want the opposition to go into the last 10-12 over with 6-7 wkts in hand. Because w/ the wkts in hand, if they need 100 runs in those overs, they could get it. If we have to, drop a batsman and play 5 bowlers in the KOs to give us the ability to attack both with the bat and the ball.

[King]

Here we go... I will bump this thread happily. I got it absolutely wrong but what the heck India wins the world cup. That is well and truly awesome. Once I started to keep away from posting here, India never looked back :winky: Now that they have won the world cup it's now time for me to break the superstition.

[vvvslaxman]

Here we go... I will bump this thread happily. I got it absolutely wrong but what the heck India wins the world cup. That is well and truly awesome. Once I started to keep away from posting here' date=' India never looked back :winky: Now that they have won the world cup it's now time for me to break the superstition.[/quote'] At the time this thread was created our sentiments were relevant. Nobody expected India owuld put up a stunning fielding display 3 matches in a row. Also our bowling unit stepped up a big time. Srilankan fans were pretty much pissed at Yuvraj all afternoon for he was eveywhere the ball went.