The 2007 World Cup has gone wrong for several reasons: Bob Woolmer's tragic death, India and Pakistan's quick elimination, a disappointing performance by hosts West Indies, empty stands, indifferent umpiring, and a lot of rain that converted a few 50-over matches to "20-20" matches, etc.
But the greatest disappointment has been the very large number of boring, one-sided matches, often featuring the "minnows".
With just six matches to go before this World Cup (thankfully!) ends, we thought we would try to classify all the 45 matches played so far based on the idea of the pressure index.
Consider the pressure index curve that appears live with the Rediff.com scorecard and is also reproduced as the pressure map on the day after. In a close and exciting game this curve tends to be very perky: a spate of boundaries by the chasing team brings the curve down, a wicket or two lost sends it soaring upwards.
In one-sided matches, however, this curve is practically lifeless. It starts well below (or well above) 100 and crawls languidly to 0 (or 200). No ups, no downs, no excitement!
Think of this curve as a coiled or undulating string, and let's tug at the two extremes of this string to straighten the curve out. If it's a match with plenty of ups and downs, we'll end up with a very long string. If the match is one-sided, we'll have a much shorter string. The length of this "string" could therefore provide a good estimate of the one-sidedness of a match.
We recently attempted this exercise and got reasonably good results: the Ireland-Zimbabwe tied match had a string "length" of 840. The England-Sri Lanka game (SL won by 2 runs) came second with 702 and the Sri Lanka-South Africa (South Africa won by 1 wicket) match was third with 645.
At the other end of the list we have Ireland-Sri Lanka (Sri Lanka reached the target of 78 with 240 balls remaining) as the most one-sided with a string length of just 63. Just above, with a value of 76, is the Ireland-Australia match (Australia reached their target of 92 with 226 balls remaining). The third place from the bottom is the England-South Africa match with a value of 136 (South Africa reached the 155 target with 184 balls remaining).
The table below ranks the 45 matches in the 2007 World Cup from really close to horribly one-sided. This table lists the rank, points, rivals and match scores.
| 1 | 840 | ZIM-IRE | IRE 221/9 (50). ZIM 221/9 (50). |
| 2 | 702 | ENG-SL | SL 235 (50). ENG 233/8 (50). |
| 3 | 645 | SL-SA | SL 209 (49.3). SA 212/9 (48.2) |
| 4 | 587 | IND-BAN | IND 191 (49.3). BAN 192/5 (48.3) |
| 5 | 583 | ENG-AUS | ENG 247 (49.5). AUS 248/3 (47.2) |
| 6 | 572 | ZIM-WI | ZIM 202/5. WI 204/4 (47.5) |
| 7 | 546 | ENG-NZ | ENG 209/7 (50). NZ 210/4 (41) |
| 8 | 531 | PAK-IRE | PAK 132 (45.4). IRE 133/7 (41.4/47). (DL) |
| 9 | 508 | NZ-SA | SA 193/7 (50). NZ 196/5 (48.2) |
| 10 | 500 | BAN-IRE | IRE 243/7. BAN 169 (41.2) |
| 11 | 496 | PAK-WI | WI 241/9 (50). PAK 187 (47.2) |
| 12 | 478 | SA-AUS | AUS 377/6 (50), SA 294 (48) |
| 13 | 463 | BAN-SA | BAN 251/8 (50). SA 184 (48.4) |
| 14 | 459 | IND-SL | SL 254/6 (50). IND 185 (43.3) |
| 15 | 437 | NZ-SL | NZ 219/7 (50). SL 222/4 (45.1) |
| 16 | 435 | SL-AUS | SL 226 (49.4). AUS 232/3 (42.4) |
| 17 | 431 | CAN-KEN | CAN 199 (50). KEN 203/3 (43.2) |
| 18 | 429 | BAN-ENG | BAN 143. ENG 147/6 (44.5) |
| 19 | 403 | IRE-ENG | ENG 266/7 (50). IRE 218 (48.1) |
| 20 | 401 | WI-SA | SA 356/4 (50). WI 289/9 (50) |
| 21 | 399 | CAN-ENG | ENG 279/6 (50). CAN 228/7 (50) |
| 22 | 375 | WI-SL | SL 303/5 (50). WI 190 (44.3) |
| 23 | 370 | WI-AUS | AUS 322/6 (50). WI 219 (45.3) |
| 24 | 368 | WI-NZ | WI 177 (44.4). NZ 179/3 (39.2) |
| 25 | 367 | IRE-SA | IRE 152/8 (35/35). SA 165/3 (31.3/35) (DL) |
| 26 | 345 | CAN-NZ | NZ 363/5 (50). CAN 249 (49.2) |
| 27 | 338 | IRE-WI | IRE 183/8 (48/48). WI 190/2 (38.1/48) |
| 28 | 312 | IRE-NZ | NZ 263/8 (50). IRE 134 (37.4) |
| 29 | 304 | BER-BAN | BER 94/9 (21/21). BAN 96/3 (17.3/21) (DL) |
| 30 | 286 | NL-SCO | SCO 136 (34.1). NL 140/2 (23.5) |
| 31 | 286 | BER-IND | IND 413/5 (50). BER 156 (43.1) |
| 32 | 284 | SCO-AUS | AUS 334/6 (50). SCO 131 (40.1) |
| 33 | 278 | KEN-ENG | KEN 177 (43/43). ENG 178/3 (33/43) |
| 34 | 277 | BAN-SL | SL 318/4 (50). BAN 112 (37/46) (DL) |
| 35 | 277 | KEN-NZ | NZ 331/7 (50). KEN 183 (49.2) |
| 36 | 249 | NL-SA | SA 353/3 (40/40). NL 132/9 (40/40) |
| 37 | 243 | BAN-NZ | BAN 174 (48.3). NZ 178/1 (29.2) |
| 38 | 202 | BAN-AUS | BAN 104/6 (22/22). AUS 106/0 (13.5/22) |
| 39 | 188 | NL-AUS | AUS 358/5 (50). NL 129 (26.5) |
| 40 | 188 | ZIM-PAK | PAK 349 (49.5). ZIM 99 (19.1/20) (DL) |
| 41 | 172 | SCO-SA | SCO 186/8 (50). SA 188/3 (23.2) |
| 42 | 167 | BER-SL | SL 321/6 (50). BER 78 (24.4) |
| 43 | 136 | ENG-SA | ENG 154 (48). SA 157/1 (19.2) |
| 44 | 76.1 | IRE-AUS | IRE 91 (30). AUS 92/1 (12.2) |
| 45 | 63.4 | IRE-SL | IRE 77 (27.4). SL 81/2 (10) |
Based on some test cases, all matches with less than 300 points must be classified as "horribly and boringly one-sided"; matches between 300-500 as "strongly one-sided"; matches between 500-600 as "somewhat close" and those above 600 as "really close".
If we agree on these criteria, then only 3 matches out of 45 (6.6%) in the 2007 WC have been really close; 7 out of 45 (15.6%) have been somewhat close; 19 out of 45 (42.2%) have been strongly one-sided and 16 out of 45 (35.6%) have been horribly and boringly one-sided.
Put another way, over 75% of the matches have been strongly or horribly one-sided. This cannot be any sort of advertisement for a World Cup event that happens once in 4 years.
Srinivas Bhogle and Sunil Kumar TM work with Cranes Software International Limited, Bangalore