Break Out the Bats and Balls!

It's that time again, when millions of fans around the world look forward to another magnificent event with bats and balls, and umpires too. Yes, after a long, hard winter, it's time for the Cricket World Cup! This is the 10th edition of the tournament, which takes place every four years. This time it is being held in India, Sri Lanka, and Bangladesh from February 19th until April 2nd. That's 7 weeks of cricket featuring 14 teams, including Canada, who are by far the worst squad to participate. (As a sign of Canada's weakness, their opening opponents, Sri Lanka, are 1/33 favourites to win the match - that means bet $33 to win $1.)

Matches are of the one-day variety, which is quite different from the 5-day tests that constitute real cricket. It's kind of like having a hockey tournament with one-period games. There's also the issue of having 4 good teams and 3 bad ones in each of the two groups. The round-robin is merely for positioning as it is unlikely there's be a big upset. In Canada's group A, Australia, New Zealand, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka will advance, while Group B will see England, India, South Africa, and the West Indies through.

This is certainly not a road-trip friendly event, with venues scattered throughout South Asia, but there are those who will fly to several matches to catch their national heroes. I'd love to join them to watch Canada, but I'm stuck in Japan for the next 6 weeks. Naturally there will be no coverage of the goings on here, but I'll be following on-line. Once the playoff round gets started, it will be really quite exciting, so follow along too!

Best,

Sean