O Brien's Glory, England's Misery

The unlikely hero

Kevin O’Brien’s sparkling innings against England would certainly be up there as one of the best ODI knocks ever seen, for the simple reason that it turned an almost lost match on its head and helped his team achieve the unachievable. Even otherwise, you don’t get to see too many fifty ball-hundreds every other day! At this moment, the impact of this superlative effort is yet to be known in its entirety, but certainly it has the ability to cause some serious headache for England so far as the world cup quarter final lineup is concerned. Not that it would automatically put England out of the race straightaway, but it has rendered all the forthcoming matches for England that much more important.

From here on, England is scheduled to play South Africa, Bangladesh and West Indies, and none of these matches are going to be easy for them. Adjusting against Bangladesh’s slow ball bowlers is going to be as much a challenge as negotiating the quick bowlers like Steyn & Morkel. West Indies too, is running into some serious form and could multiply England’s problems. If England does lose to South Africa, the next two matches would turn out to be knock-out encounters for them. And because they have had a forgettable campaign till now, it only adds to the pressure.

Catching-up time

They have come into this tournament on back of a six-one loss against the Aussies, and done nothing here to get their confidence back. They have somehow managed to scrape through against Netherland, tied a match against India and then lost to Ireland. With two of the relative easier matches out of their way, they have to quickly regroup, if they want to travel any further in this edition of the world cup.

South Africa and the West Indies are sitting pretty with two wins each. Since both these teams are due to play against Ireland, you could safely assume that they would comfortably book their quarter-final berths. India too are playing against Ireland, and that should provide them a chance to secure two more points, and hence a claim on the third QF spot. It would be too much to expect O’Brien to repeat his heroics yet again against any of these sides.

So, in my opinion, only the fourth quarter final spot in Group B is logically up for the grabs and England has to race against Ireland and Bangladesh to secure that.

But then Destiny and O’Brien might have other ideas.