Cricket Web’s World Twenty20 Predictions- Revisited

On the eve of the recently-completed World Twenty20 tournament, four members of the Cricket Web staff- James Nixon, Martyn Corrin, Ganesh Venkatasubramanian and Will Quinn- gave their predictions on how it would go. The time has now come to look back and see how they fared.

Who’s going home with the trophy?

Unsurprisingly, none of us at Cricket Web were able to successfully predict Pakistan’s awesome run of form to take the tournament. In fact only James, the site’s owner, came out with any credit from this round of predictions as Sri Lanka just missed out. The rest of us all expected another win for India, causing any plans for a career in fortune telling to be put on hold. Martyn draws the largest chuckle for his suggestion that they would ‘retain it in style’, saving us a great deal of embarrassment by being even more wrong than everyone else.

Who will be the beaten finalists?

Once again, no one here called Sri Lanka as the team to miss out in the final. Martyn saved some face with his respectable answer of Pakistan, but unfortunately for him they were even better than he expected. Ganesh and I missed out again with South Africa’s obligatory choke occurring one match sooner than expected. James is the big loser here, having failed to follow up on his decent prediction of Sri Lanka for the tournament with the suggestion that India would reach the final. So no points for anyone so far. Oh dear. At least nobody plumped for Australia.

Which batsman will score the most runs?

Another failure for everyone this time, as Tillakaratne Dilshan stormed to the title with 317 runs in seven innings. James came closest, with Sanath Jayasuriya’s 177 runs seeing him take joint sixth position. My prediction of Gautam Gambhir fell flat with the little left-hander only hitting 148, while unfortunately for Ganesh Rohit Sharma fared little better, but the wooden spoon goes to Martyn Corrin, who expected MS Dhoni to ‘have a great one’. Dhoni eventually came in at 27th with 86 runs at the dire strike rate of 96.62. That’s one place below Ireland’s William Porterfield.

Who will take the most wickets?

Incredibly, Martyn?s suggestion that Stuart Broad would take the most wickets was the closest anyone got to calling this one. Injury put paid to Ganesh’s and my predictions of Fidel Edwards and Daniel Vettori respectively, although my calling Vettori ‘the best limited overs spinner in the world’ seemingly offended Ajantha Mendis, Saeed Ajmal and Shahid Afridi, all of whom took the opportunity to make me look like a fool. James thought Harbhajan Singh would do the business for India, but he only managed five wickets in five games as India crashed out.

Who will be the surprise package of the tournament?

There’s finally some success for Cricket Web here. James called Australia failing to make the semis, but Ganesh takes the plaudits here for not only successfully predicting the West Indies progressing to the Super Eights at the expense of Australia, but also their eliminating of England. Meanwhile, my answer of the Netherlands came good within hours of the tournament beginning as they scraped to a last-ball victory against England. Only Martyn misses out, with his prediction of England making the semi-finals just missing out in a rain-affected deciding match against the West Indies.

Any other predictions?

Ganesh once again emerges with a lot of credit for saying that Brett Lee would be taken for six fours in an over by Chris Gayle. In actual fact it was even worse than that- Lee went for 27 runs in one over, all of which were scored by Gayle, in the most expensive over of the tournament. James, too, made an accurate prediction here, saying that Australia would have an awful tournament. The laughing at Martyn continues as England’s selectors didn’t give his prediction that Graham Napier would score a hatful against the Netherlands and not much else a chance to come good. Unfortunately for me, Boyd Rankin did not quite manage to take ten wickets in an innings, nor did he move to England. Ireland did, however, progress to the Super Eights stage at the expense of Bangladesh.

The original predictions can be found here. Our crystal ball was found to be somewhat faulty this time round, but we’ll get it fixed on time for the Ashes. Join us then as we will exclusively reveal who will and won’t do the business in cricket’s next big event!