With India all but in the semi-finals and West Indies 100% out, this match doesn’t really matter, falling into that position of a dead rubber, an unfortunate symptom of the overly long round-robin format. India would have been favourites to win anyway, what with outranking West Indies 2nd to 7th, but, what with West Indies’ form ranging so much from their best to their worst, this had had the potential to be an upset. It wouldn’t have even been that big an upset. But now, well, and with Andre Russell out, suddenly this is a huge upset if West Indies get anywhere near this. They shouldn’t, but with Chris Gayle in the team, Carlos Braithwaite just getting that almost match winning century, the bowlers bouncing Pakistan out and nearly doing the same to Australia, and so many who have had moments of form, you never know. India, however, are so consistent (bar a warm-up loss to New Zealand) that surely the upset is not going to happen. Surely.
Five Fearless Predictions:
(1) India will win
I usually have the winner as my 5th prediction but this one seems so obvious. In a series with a few major upsets, you never know what might happen, but surely India will win. Surely.
(2) Rohit Sharma will bully
He seems to get the big scores in matches that India were going to win anyway, the definition of a batting bully, and, since I think that India are going to win this one anyway, it seems primed for him to get a big one. Maybe 100, maybe 150, and possibly even all the way to 200.
(3) Jasprit Bumrah will fire
Against Afghanistan Bumrah was the deserving man of the match recipient in spite of not taking many wickets, because his bowling was that good, and it looks like this is the match where he was capitalise on the wickets tally for all of that good bowling.
(4) Jason Holder will fire
He’s been there or thereabouts for much of the tournament but is yet to put in a really big one and I am picking him to do it here.
(5) Carlos Braithwaite will do well
While it is tempting to suggest that his almost win against New Zealand was a one-off, I’d like to think that he’ll do well in the next one as well. It’d be nice to see a few big ones spiral into the stands.
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