No, not basketball. For all the cricket fans of this blog (yes, both of you), this of course refers to the 2011 World Cup currently taking place in India, Sri Lanka, and Bangladesh. The group round-robin qualifying matches have just been completed with no upsets, leaving the eight top-seeded teams to advance to the quarterfinals. From now on, it is sudden death format.
The quarterfinal matchups are:
March 23: Pakistan v West Indies (played in Bangladesh)
March 24: Australia v India (played in India)
March 25: New Zealand v South Africa (played in Bangladesh)
March 26: Sri Lanka v England (played in Sri Lanka)
My picks are Pakistan, South Africa, and Sri Lanka to advance. The India v Australia game is tough to call but I will have to give the home field edge to India.
The semifinal games will be played on March 29 and 30 in Sri Lanka and India, and the final will be on April 2 in India.
I remember back in 2007 when Ireland progressed to the Super 8 stage at the expense of Pakistan an entire nation stood up and said “Wait a minute, we play cricket?”
This year when we beat England rather than celebrate we just laughed our asses off.
Still these successes have opened my eye to cricket.