India’s road to the Semis

OK… it’s quite clear. To make it into the Semi-Finals… as our dear Coach Greg Chappell expects India to do… we have to win 4 (four) matches against the Super-8 teams.

So assuming we win against Bangladesh and Bermuda…

We simply HAVE to defeat Sri Lanka! (on 22 March)

The next match (if India do beat Sri Lanka) would be against South Africa. (on 28 March)
I actually feel that South Africa may not do as well as they will like in this tournament (I’m hoping that the tracks will be low/slow, rather than South African/Australian). I therefore have more faith in India’s grafting ability than South Africa’s… so we might just win this.

The next match would be against… Pakistan (or West Indies) (1 April).
I fear that we might lose either, but the point of this column is not to make predictions, just present possibilities. So for number sake, I’ll assume we lose this.

The next match would be against… England or New Zealand (4 April), and this we SHOULD win.

At this point India would have had 6 points from four games… and still it’s not 100% sure of making it.

The next game against New Zealand or England (12 April)

And then against Australia (16 April).

Thankfully, if we do win against Sri Lanka, our last match would be against West Indies (or Pakistan) (on April 18) 

Meaning, even if we lose to Australia and haven’t made our four wins, we still have West Indies/Pakistan to meet to qualify. However, in that case, there is a possibility that an India-WestIndies or India-Pakistan match would be like a knockout quarter finals! A must-win situation! Now that’s a nail-biter we don’t want to see!

So to summarise: we need to win at least four matches against the Super 8s. We are allowed to lose three (not more) to safely qualify for the semi finals.

Here’s a listing is similar to this listing. In fact they have gone ahead and called it India’s schedule for the World Cup.

Also, here’s some ‘hocus-pocus’ permentations from the same site.