Sri Lanka is a cricket power and it has good performance in T20 World Cup so far. All the matches will be played in three stadiums and they are Pallekele International Cricket Stadium, R Premadasa Stadium and Mahinda Rajapaksa International Cricket Stadium. Of these three grounds, Pallekele International Cricket Stadium and R Premadasa Stadium have crowd capacity of 35000 while the Mahinda Rajapaksa International Cricket Stadium has crowd capacity of 60000. So, there will be no shortage of spectators.
Twelve teams are participating in the events and they have been divided into four groups. In each group, there are three countries and two top teams from each group will advance to the Super Eight and in Super Eight, there will be two groups. Again from Super Eight, the top two teams will move to the semi-finals. You can easily understand that after that the two semi-final winners will play in the final match.
Now, let us take a look at the groups and who are going to do well and advance in the Super Eight. In group A, teams are England, India and Afghanistan. There is an every possibility that England and India will not have any difficulty to advance into Super Eight and hardly anyone is expecting for Afghanistan to cause any upset.
In group B, the teams are Australia, West Indies and Ireland and again Australia and West Indies are most likely to advance easily. Group C may sound bit difficult as there are three strong countries in Sri Lanka, South Africa and Zimbabwe. I am expecting that Zimbabwe will give some trouble to the two other countries in T20. However, it is true that Zimbabwe does not have the strength that they used to have in the past.
Group D is another tricky group involving all the three countries that play Test matches and they are Pakistan, New Zealand and Bangladesh. Pakistan is most likely to advance into the Super Eight very easily and there is a good chance that Bangladesh may cause an upset against New Zealand. The recent form of Bangladesh is not bad and New Zealand has suffered a lost in the last one year. So, I am hopping that Bangladesh may move into the Super Eight with Pakistan.
I have already stated that Sri Lankan Premier League T20 event is taking place now and the players who are taking part in it are most likely to get some advantage. They will get good practice for the Sri Lankan condition and this is something that may give age to both Sri Lanka who is the host of both SLPL and T20 World Cup 2012 and Pakistan. Pakistan may get some advantage because a number of Pakistani players are participating in SLPL and they are also getting good practice. Another country that is in action now is India and they are playing against New Zealand. There will be a lot of pressure for India to perform.
I personally feel that it will be a South Asian country that will win the event and I think that it will be one of the teams among India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. Outside of South Asia, England looks to be a balanced team and you can never count out Australia.
There will be a lot of pressure on Indian team to win this event because India is the current World Cup champion of One-day cricket. However, after winning the World Cup in the first part of 2011, things have gone very bad for India and they suffered some heavy losses in international cricket. So, Indian fans want something out of this event. When T20 World Cup started it was 2007. There was a lot of excitement but I think that IPL and other events like SLPL, Big Bash and BPL and even T20 events in England have perhaps decreased the attraction of T20 cricket. The main reason is that almost everyone there is an event of this shortage version of cricket and that is why it is difficult for fans to get too much excited.
As for television channels, it is Star Cricket that is going to broadcast the matches live for South Asia. Of course, each country has its own channels and in a separate entry in this Blog, we are going to give all the information that you need about TV channels of T20 World Cup cricket.
There is no doubt that T20 is the most popular format of cricket now a days. It is important not to try to make too much crowd of it. Because of IPL and other T20 events, this World Cup has lost much of its glamour. Well, ICC and the cricket boards of all the Test playing countries should think of making international cricket popular and always giving priority to international cricket rather than local T20 events. Here, we have to remember that it is international cricket that should come first.
