After aiming their first shots at the supposed lesser lights of the Cricket World Cup, the big guns are at last trained on each other over the next few days, with a series of contests matching the longest-established test-playing nations.
The last two World Cup hosts, South Africa and the West Indies, will meet Thursday.
That will be followed a day later by the reigning champion, Australia, meeting New Zealand — not just its steady regional rival, but the last team to beat it in a World Cup match, so long ago that it happened in another millennium, in 1999.
Saturday will see co-hosts Sri Lanka and Pakistan staging a potentially explosive rematch of their meeting in the 2009 World Twenty20 final. Finally, on Sunday, India, the co-host and favorite, will play an England squad desperately relieved just to have defeated the Netherlands by six wickets in its tournament debut Tuesday, in a match that was much closer than expected.
Each contest is rich in promise, a potential pointer to fortunes in the later stages of the tournament.
Yet, there is a strong argument that the most important contest over the next four days is none of the above. Taking place at Mirpur Stadium in Dhaka, Bangladesh, on Friday, it matches the third co-host, Bangladesh, with Ireland, which had to win a spot in the tournament in a qualifying tournament for the nontest nations.
The big teams are most likely jostling for position ahead of the real business of the tournament, which comes in the quarterfinals and after.
All want to win their matches over the next few days, but none will feel that its chances have been brutally damaged should it lose.
Bangladesh vs. Ireland is, by contrast, arguably the first must-win contest of the tournament. Both teams cherish serious hopes of reaching the quarterfinals. Each, after all, reached the final eight in the West Indies in 2007. Either would see victory in Mirpur as a significant step toward that ambition — and defeat as a savage blow.
A victory would get Bangladesh back on track after the opening-day beating it took from India. Defeating Ireland would show it to be capable of winning against less formidable opposition. Further victories over the Netherlands, the other team in Group B that came through the qualifying tournament, and the West Indies, which began the tournament ranked marginally below Bangladesh, would probably be enough to see it through to a quarterfinal, which would be played on a home ground, Mirpur.
Lose, and it must cope with the psychological blow of a 0-2 start, the desperate disappointment of its passionate supporters and the practical problem that such a defeat would leave almost no room for a further setback. To progress, it would almost certainly need to beat either a formidable South Africa team or England. England, in theory, is much less imposing, but it is a team Bangladesh has beaten only once in 14 one-day international meetings.
Ireland has at least been relieved of the pressure to save the honor of the qualifiers, thanks to the vibrant Dutch display against England. It can concentrate on its own goal, which is to follow its progression in 2007 by once again reaching the later stages.
It has only itself to blame for that task’s being tougher than it was four years ago. If it had not condemned Pakistan to an early flight home by beating it on, of all dates, St. Patrick’s Day, the organizers might not have lengthened the current tournament’s pool stage in order — as they have admitted — to protect the bigger teams and the commercial income they bring with them.
St. Patrick’s Day, March 17, falls during this tournament as well, but the organizers have not scheduled a match for Ireland that day.
Ireland captain William Porterfield believes his team can progress again. “I think we have a great chance of getting out of our group,” he said before the tournament.
If the task is tougher than in 2007, so is his squad. Four years ago most players were amateurs. Now all but two have professional contracts.
Newcomers since 2007 include Ed Joyce, an Irish-born batsman good enough to have played for England in the last World Cup, and teenage spin-bowler George Dockrell, who made a big impression with his control and composure amid the batting mayhem of the last World Twenty20 tournament.
It remains to be seen whether Irish success this time would — as senior player Niall O’Brien has suggested — make it harder for the organizers to exclude it from the next tournament, in 2015, when the number of teams is set to be cut from 14 to 10.
It is not as if its success in 2007 brought grateful thanks from cricket’s rulers.
But Ireland remains determined to test the proposition, and beating Bangladesh would be a huge step toward that — leaving it needing to beat its fellow qualifier, Netherlands, plus one other team to reach the later stages.
Defeat would mean having to beat at least two test nations to have a chance of going through — at this stage, not quite make or break, but certainly severely reducing its chances.
Ireland knows it can beat Bangladesh. It won when they met at the last World Cup and also in the 2009 World Twenty20. Outside of that, they played once in Bangladesh, a 3-0 series victory for the hosts three years ago.
Either way it should be fascinating, with all the tension of the match that truly matters. Too bad, if the organizers have their way, that it could be a long time before these two meet again in a World Cup.
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