Fools & Failures

As Ricky Ponting’s Australian team marched triumphantly away undefeated from the World Cup, and Kenya returned home as heroes after leaving as virtual nobodies, there were some nations who were left to cry in their beers, braais or curries after a disappointing campaign.

The following is a highlights (or should that be lowlights) package of those outstanding failures that managed to threaten the status of the overwhelming success that this tournament proved to be.

My top ten, starting from number ten are…

10. Sourav Ganguly – During the Port Elizabeth semi-final between Australia and Sri Lanka, Adam Gilchrist managed to show that cricket can still be regarded as a gentlemen’s game when he decided to walk after being given not out to a bat-pad catch off the bowling of Sri Lanka’s Mutthiah Muralitheran.

However during the final, Indian captain Sourav Ganguly did his utmost to disprove that claim by attempting to claim a catch off of none other than Adam Gilchrist.

Unlike the semi, Gilchrist did not move from the crease and he was subsequently given not out. The replay justified the umpires’ decision after it conclusively proved that the ball had made contact with Gilchrist’s thigh, and not his bat, before making it into Ganguly’s hands at first slip, via the turf some distance in front of the awaiting Indian.

So conclusive was the evidence against Ganguly that one had to question the skipper’s integrity, a mark that may tarnish his career for some time to come.

9. World Cup Officials – So strict were the marketing and sponsorship rights to the World Cup that paying patrons were only allowed to take in beverage products belonging to Pepsi. Everything from bottled water to fruit boxes and soft drinks were thrown out at the gate if they were not an “approved” product.

So what happened when an innocent spectator was seen to be consuming a can of soft drink belonging to a rival company of Pepsi? Not only was the drink thrown out by ground officials, but so was the spectator.

8. England – England couldn’t afford to loose a game let alone forfeit any if they wished to make it to the Super-six round alongside the likes of Australia and India.

After their safety regarding playing in Zimbabwe had been assured and India had proved its safety by playing in Harare, the English side, led by Nasser Hussain, opted to forfeit the points rather than play in Zimbabwe on the grounds of security concerns.

The decision would prove to be critical. In their penultimate round robin clash against reigning world champs Australia, Nasser Hussain strangely handed the ball to Jimmy Anderson for the 49th over of the game with Australia seven wickets down and needing more than a dozen runs to secure a freakish victory.

Anderson had bowled nine wicket-less overs for more than fifty runs while Andy Caddick had four wickets to his name and still had one over up his sleeve.

The first ball of Anderson’s over sailed over the mid-wicket fence for six and the second (ironically past Caddick at mid-on) for four. Australia cruised to victory, and England missed the Super-six round to the tune of the Aussie supporters singing “I, O, the Merrio, you should have gone to Zim”.

7. Bangladesh– Widely touted as the Test whipping boys, this was Bangladesh’s chance to not only prove they could hack it with the big boys, but also to get some much needed wins against seemingly lesser opposition.

In one of the biggest disappointments of the tournament, Bangladesh failed to win one game and got its only points virtue of a washout against the luckless West Indies.

Not only did they fail to win, but their defeats came at the hands of Kenya and Canada of all teams. While Kenya, without Test status, made it as far as the semi-finals, Bangladesh could only look back on what could have been, as their own Test status came under question.

6. Pakistan – Always renowned for their inconsistency, Pakistan headed into the tournament alongside Australia and hosts South Africa as favourites for the title of World Champions.

Things were looking good, as the Pakis had Australia on the ropes during their first round robin match at the Wanderers ground in Johannesburg, but from there things went sour.

Captain Waqar Younis lead the way on the downward slide by being taken out of the attack by umpire David Sheppard for bowling two head-high full tosses at Australia’s Andrew Symonds.

With Waqar out of the attack and Symonds incensed by the beamers, Australia made over 300 on the back of the Queenslander’s 143 not out, and went on to thrash the Pakis.

Pakistan never recovered. And after losses to England and neighboring rivals India, they failed to even make it to the Super-six round. Waqar lost his job as captain and not even Wasim Akram’s 500th One-Day International wicket, or Shoaib Akhtar’s record breaking 100 mile-an-hour delivery could put light on their very dark tournament.

5. New Zealand – In a very similar vein to England, the Kiwi’s too chose to forfeit their scheduled match in Nairobi against home side Kenya, citing security concerns.

Earlier in the year the New Zealanders cut short their tour of Sri Lanka for the same reasons after a car-bomb exploded just metres from their hotel, killing dozens. It would have appeared that the Kiwis were still haunted (and rightly so) by this experience, because despite Nairobi’s relative safety (which I experienced for myself), the Kiwis forfeited.

It would prove costly. After they managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory against Australia in a super-six fixture at Port Elizabeth, the New Zealanders found themselves a game short of a semi-final birth by virtue of their earlier forfeit. To add insult to injury, Kenya, the team they forfeited the points to, was the team that made it through to the semis ahead of New Zealand.

4. Canada – It would hardly seem fair to include Canada in this listing, after all they were never really expected to win a single game. But after their surprise victory over the hapless Bangladesh in Durban, there was an air of excitement surrounding the North Americans.

So it was with a certain restrained excitement that I headed to Paarl to watch the Canada v. Sri Lanka round robin fixture. I had managed to obtain the tickets for this game courtesy of the Canadian team who I had met in Cape Town several days earlier. Their positive approach and enjoyment of the experience had engulfed me and I was looking forward to the opportunity of watching them play.

What I saw was a trouncing. Canada was dismissed for 36, the lowest ever score in a World Cup match, and Sri Lanka took less than half an hour to reel in the meager total and cruise to a nine wicket victory.

3. Shane Warne – “Role model” is a phrase quite often thrown at our most elite sports-men and women, none more so than Shane Warne. However “drug cheat” is not a phrase often attached to these types of people.

On the morning of Australia’s opening match of the tournament against Pakistan in Johannesburg it was revealed that that label had indeed been attached to one of our most elite sportsmen. Shane Warne had tested positive to a banned diuretic after an internal drug test conducted by the ACB.

Labelled a “disgrace” by the South African media and public, Warne returned home without having bowled a single ball in what was to be his last appearance in an Australian one-day uniform.

Although what Warne took was only a diet pill, the timing and lame reasoning for him taking the pill left him as one of the big failures and disappointments of the tournament. Not to mention the burden to his team, who were left without (arguably) their best player.

2. Sri Lanka - Although expectations were never overwhelmingly high on the Sri Lankans, results leading up to their match against Kenya in Nairobi had lead them to being seen as possible “dark horses” for the tournament title.

Kenya had beaten the West Indies in the previous two World Cups, which alone should have had the Sri Lankans approaching Kenya as a legitimate and worthy opponent.

They didn’t, and it cost them badly. In the biggest upset result of the tournament, the Sri Lankans crumbled to a shock defeat at the hands of the World Cup giant killers. Captain Sanath Jayasuria labelled the day as the worst in his country’s cricket history…and rightly so.

1. South Africa – If ever there was a team under pressure, this was it. Dogged by recent controversies mainly concerning the late Hansie Cronje, South Africa entered the tournament amidst the selection policy furor that saw some of the nation’s best players, namely Neil Mackenzie and now captain Graeme Smith, left out of their World Cup squad.

No host nation had even made the semi-final of a world cup. But despite this they entered the tournament alongside Australia as the overwhelming favourites for the title, and even before a ball had been bowled people were talking up an Australia v. South Africa final.

And perhaps the South African players also had their minds a lot further ahead than what they should have been, because the Proteas failed to beat any of the Test ranked sides in their preliminary pool.

Tragically the final nail was driven into the host’s coffin courtesy of a sensational rain-affected tie against Sri Lanka.

In an atrocious display of team management, South Africa required just one run off what was to be the final ball due to the driving rain that had already shortened the game. Working on the information that had been handed to him, Mark Boucher simply bunted the final ball thinking that he had already secured the win from his impressive six earlier in the over.

The game was tied and the South Africans were eliminated from the tournament long before anyone had expected. This result also put captain Shaun Pollock under pressure to retain his position.

Pollock’s captaincy had been unimaginative at best. He hardly used his spinner in Nicky Boje and constantly kept the field well spread out when he needed to assert pressure on the batsmen, as was the case against New Zealand. With the exception of Herschell Gibbs he failed to gain the most out of his players.

Alan Donald was always under an injury cloud and his performances were well below his usual standard. His article after the side’s loss to New Zealand that referred to how much the side missed former captain Cronje, suggested that there was little faith in Pollock from the players… and the pressure continued to mount.

World Cup ‘99 hero, Lance Kluesner failed to impress as he did four years earlier. Although he nearly twice won the game for the hosts off his own bat he made critical errors at vital stages of the game, and his bowling was well below par. Above all though he showed very little commitment towards his team, he appeared to be more about himself than ever before.

The loss of evergreen Jonty Rhodes was a heavy blow to the locals. Jonty was the heart and soul of South African cricket, and after his early departure due to injury the side just never looked the same, and they crumbled under the weight of the nation’s expectations.

As a consequence of the amazing early departure of the favourites, captain Pollock lost his job at the helm and the South African team was left with a lot of soul searching to do. The next four years leading to the 2007 World Cup in the West Indies will be a big test to see if the Proteas can come back from the major disappointment of the 2003 event.