The Biggest Upset

It's been a long while since I've had so much fun watching a cricket match. The main reason why I watched the Australia-Bangladesh match on Saturday was to see how (and not if) Australia pick themselves up after a horrendous start to the season (and that's "Batman Begins" speaking as well!).

I have no doubt that this was the greatest upset in ODI history. The three others that come close were the Zimbabwe-Australia match in the 1983 World Cup (where one can argue that no one knew what to make of the debutants and the Aussies were slipping into their worst patch in the last 25 years), the Kenya-West Indies WC match at Pune in 1996 and the Bangladesh-Pakistan WC match in 1999 (which of course had eyebrows hitting the ceiling). This one was a run chase and as one look at the Top 10 list on Cricinfo will show, the only one among the historic topplers.

It could have been an even better weekend had ESPN not replaced the Eng-Aus match to show Confederations Cup action, so I wasn't able to catch Pietersen's innings (dunno if they switched back later, but I had retired for the day in dismay). The Australians find themselves skidding all over the place, but of course, they can't be written off yet - cast your mind back to the Texaco Trophy in 1997 (IIRC, a 3-0 whitewash) and more famously, the 1999 World Cup which started in somewhat similar fashion.