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Sri Lanka, West Indies hold slight edge

The Twenty20 World Cup enters an interesting stage when hosts Sri Lanka take on New Zealand (2pm UAE time) in the first Super Eights match at Pallekele today. England face West Indies at the same venue in the second match at 6pm.

With all top teams comfortably securing their Super Eight berths, the cricket fans can look towards some thrilling encounters in the coming days. Group 2, comprising India, Pakistan, South Africa and Australia, is the toughest one while Group 1 features England, West Indies, Sri Lanka and New Zealand.

Sri Lanka, with a lot of variety in their bowling attack, start favourites in the match against New Zealand, who rely a lot on their Twenty20 experts Brendon McCullum and Ross Taylor.

The Lankans are a bit worried about the availability of injured Ajantha Mendis, who demolished Zimbabwe with career-best figures of 6 wickets for 8 runs from four overs, in the opening match at Hambantota.

If he is back today, the Lankans have a lethal bowling attack to restrict the Kiwis, but their batting remains a bit suspect.

Though the Lankans scored 182 for 4 against Zimbabwe, they came a cropper against the South Africans in a seven-over match.

New Zealand, always jittery while playing quality spinners, would be once again looking at McCullum, who smashed a 58-ball 123 against Bangladesh, to give them an electric start in the Super Eight opener.

In the second match, defending champions England face a big challenge against the mercurial West Indies. England had started the tournament with a bang, thrashing Afghanistan by 116 runs. But Stuart Broad and his team were in for a big shock soon when a new-look Indian side, who narrowly defeated the Afghans in their earlier match, thumped England by 90 runs in Colombo.

West Indies would be keen to exploit England’s weakness against the turning ball by using their star spinner Sunil Narine. It remains to be seen whether the absence of an experienced campaigner like Kevin Pietersen would hurt England’s chances in the tournament.

The Windies, on the other hand, are quite capable of winning the title itself, but they are not renowned for consistency. Though they have been struggling to put up competent performances in one-day internationals and Tests, they have an outstanding Twenty20 team.

Chris Gayle can single-handedly turn the fortunes of any match in a few overs with his devastating batting. He has a lot of support from the likes of Kieron Pollard, Dwayne Bravo and Marlon Samuels — all experienced Twenty20 campaigners.

In their first match against Australia, their batsmen, especially Gayle and Samuels, toyed with the Aussie bowlers and posted a good total of 191. But their bowlers failed to capitalise on the situation as Ravi Rampaul alone contributed 23 runs from seven balls. The result could have been different if the match was not interrupted by rain in the 10^th over of Australian innings. At that stage Australia were strongly placed at 100 for one, but the fall of one or two wickets could have changed the game. But that was not to be and the Aussies went on to win the match by 17 runs. In their second match as well, rain played spoilsport but the bowlers redeemed themselves by restricting minnows Ireland to 129 for six in 20 overs.

Rain remains a constant threat and the fans might have to watch a lot of seven-over matches in the Super Eight stage.

pradeep@khaleejtimes.com