World Cup: West Indies vs Pakistan Opener

World Cup: West Indies vs Pakistan Opener today Bridgetown, March 13 (AP): The West Indies' homeground advantage in the World Cup opener against Pakistan has been diminished, slightly. The West Indies and Pakistan will get their first feel of the Sabina Park pitch at Kingston, Jamaica in the opening Group D match Tuesday after a late switch in practice venues on the eve of the match to ensure the revamped venue was completely ready. ''There's a lot going on, as you'd expect, so it made sense for them to practice at the Kensington club,'' International Cricket Council spokesman Brian Murgatroyd said. ''Sabina Park looks absolutely spectacular. We're going to play here tomorrow, weather permitting. It's ready to go.'' West Indies captain Brian Lara was more focussed on the match against Pakistan than what he described as a minor hiccup involving practice nets. The 37-year-old left-hander, playing in his fifth World Cup, was happy for the focus to finally switch from construction to cricket when the six-week tournament starts in front of 20,000 Sabina Park spectators. It will be the first World Cup match in the Caribbean, coming 32 years after current team manager Clive Lloyd led the West Indies to the title in inaugural edition in England in 1975. All of the venues have either been built or revamped and the traditional bouncy wickets are expected to give way, at the start of the tournament at least, for low and slow pitches. Lara's team is under enormous pressure after getting skittled for 85 and losing by nine wickets to India in its last warmup match on Friday. ''I think it definitely gave us that jolt, that sort of something we needed before a big tournament,'' Lara said. ''I think the guys have sort of resurrected their confidence and we're looking forward to getting out there tomorrow.'' The West Indies have not reached a World Cup final since losing in an upset to India in 1983, finishing one win short of a claiming three consecutive World Cup titles. Australia is after that record this time. After the opening ceremonies on Sunday night in Jamaica, Australia was among the 12 teams that spent the day in transit to venues in St. Kitts, St. Lucia and Trinidad for matches later in the week. Pakistan won its two warmup matches at Trinidad last week, including one against the top-ranked South Africans. ''We take it with a pinch of salt,'' Pakistan coach Bob Woolmer said of the results in warmups. ''We now need to win the main matches.'' After an unsettled buildup, Woolmer doubted he'd have to worry about complacency among his team, despite its eight wins over the West Indies in their last 10 one-day matches. Pakistan's preparation was overshadowed by the doping controversy involving fast bowlers Shoaib Akhtar and Mohammad Asif and their positive tests for the banned steroid nandrolone, and the injury to all-rounder Abdul Razzaq. Akhtar and Asif failed fitness tests and were withdrawn from the squad last week, while Razzaq was sidelined with a serious knee injury. ''It is good that we all know where we stand and we do not have injuries or drug-related issues to worry the team,'' Woolmer said. Defending champion Australia plays Scotland at St. Kitts in the first Group A match on Wednesday, when Canada and Kenya start Group C in St. Lucia.

The first Group B match is Thursday with 1996 champion Sri Lanka against Bermuda.

The Cricket World Cup will start off today opening a two month extravaganza followed by millions of persons all over the world. With the addition of six non test playing nations, the cricketing interest is likely to percolate even to countries like Canada, Bermuda, Netherlands, Ireland, Kenya and Scotland.

In all this sporting excitement there is a commercial aspect sorrounding which player will be the man of the match or the amn of the tournament. Such players would be able to commercially exploit their on field performances through advertisment and promotion contracts as well as prize monies.

In view of the commercial importance of such recognitions, it is important to have a good transparent system of rating the player's performances on the field.

Naavi's Cricket Rating is exactly meant for thsi purpose. During its grand success in its debut in 1999, the rating methodology has proved to be innovatively different from other ratings. And being a rating specially structured for closed tournaments such as the World Cups, Cricket enthusiasts will find this rating an ideal tool to evaluate the performances of their favourites.

An exclusive feature of this rating is that it evaluates the performance against a "Target". If a batsmen has scored 100 in 120 balls when the target rate required was run a ball, then he would lose points for the shortfall in the scoring rate and earn only 76 points for the jundered runs scored. If this was against a weak bowling team, the rating would fall further. For example, according to the weightage table used by the rating, West Indies bowling will be considered stronger than Paksitan bowling and hence any score of West Indies will be diluted by a factor of 0.9. If therefore an West Indies batsmen chasing a score of 300 in 50 overs scores a century in 120 balls, his net points earned would be around 72. At the same time the Paksitani batsmen who scores 60 in 40 balls in the same match while stting the target of 300 eould score 80 rating points.

Naavi's Ratign system will therefore hold the Pakistani batsmen who scored 60 in 40 balls as the man of the match over the West Indies batsman who scored 100 in 120 balls irrespective of who wins the game.

Some may disagree with this system which disregards whether the contribution resulted in victory or not. However, our logic is that the rating automatically takes into account the contribution made to victory since the actual runs scored is modified by the scoring rate factor. Where this rating differs from others is that when a good performance of a player is spoiled by other team members, the rating will identify such spoilers who some time get the wrong credit. If some top order batsman starts accumulating runs to save his career and lets the Dhoni's or Afridi's to carry too much responsibility at death, such unsporting team players will be highlighted by this system while all other systems hail the century maker automatically as the Hero of the match though he made it that much harder for the lower end batsmen to work for the victory.

The beuty of such fine analysis will be seen during this worldcup when people follow Naavi's Cricket Rating unflod

Last but not the least, Naavi's Cricket rating will be transparent for every netizen to follow the rating differences from match to match because the detailed rating calculation for each match will be made available on the website http://www.naavi.org/cwc_2007

Now, predict and watch who will be the man of the match in today's Pakistan-West Indies match. Will it be Lara with a blitz? or Yousuf with a slower ton?

March 13: West Indies vs Pakistan

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well good luck to pakistan, all controversies to one side i dont think they can win it even though i hope they do but at least there is nothing distracting them.

they can win this match, they need a big score on the board tho

Current statistics of the match...are good.

Paki win the toss n chose to feild...

First wicket for WI falls on 7/1.

Umar Gul takes Chris Gayles wicket...caught behind (by kamran akmal) 😃

Good that Gayle is out early for Pakistan.

thanks for that .

Yeh may be they will winnnnnnnnnn