Hamilton, Mar 9:
On the cusp of creating World Cup history, a supremely confident India will aim to crush a gutsy Ireland in their penultimate group encounter of the ICC cricket World Cup, here tomorrow.
Having already qualified for the quarter-finals with four commanding wins, the defending champions are eyeing their fifth straight win in the tournament.
If India happen to win tomorrow, it will create a new World Cup record of winning nine straight matches at the global event, starting from their win against the West Indies in Chennai during the 2011 edition.
Their win against the Caribbeans in the previous match at Perth was their eighth successive win and that had equalled Sourav Ganguly’s team’s successful run during the 2003 edition in South Africa.
It will be another David vs Goliath contest where India will be looking to maintain their supremacy over Ireland, who are seeking fourth spot in Pool B to make the quarter-final grade.
The last time India met Ireland was in Bangalore during the last edition of the World Cup, where the hosts comfortably beat their opponents by five wickets as Yuvraj Singh emerged as the star performer with a ‘five-for’ and a half-century.
Such has been the impact created by the Mohammed Shamis and the Ravichandran Ashwins that none of the opposition team’s batsmen have been able to post a total of 250 in the competition.
The tournament till now has been all about the resurgence of India’s bowling unit which has taken 37 wickets amongst themselves in the four matches. If one takes out Bhuvneshwar Kumar’s single wicket effort against UAE, the other five have shared the 36 among them.
While Ravichandran Ashwin and Mohammed Shami with nine wickets apiece have been the two prime performers, Umesh Yadav, Mohit Sharma and Ravindra Jadeja with six scalps apiece have done their job with equal efficiency and sincerity.
One small piece of statistic will be testimony to the kind of influence the bowlers have had in the ongoing tournament, one should sample the economy rate of the five-pronged bowling attack.
The ‘worst’ economy rate, if one dare to say so, is that of left-arm spinner Ravindra Jadeja, whose economy rate has been a very decent 4.51 runs per over. (PTI)
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