ICC World Cup: South Africa to take on Afghanistan in Ahmedabad this afternoon
In ICC World Cup today, Afghanistan will lock horns with South Africa at the Narendra Modi stadium in Ahmedabad. The match will start at 2 p.m.
Difficult as it might be to believe, The World’s Biggest Cricket Stadium sneaks up on you. After the tangled traffic of Ahmedabad’s centre is sloughed off, head northwest on good roads for Motera and see a street of villas here, a school there, a hospital somewhere else, a temple or two, or three, and a metro rail above it all.
Anything vast enough to accommodate 1,32,000, each in the splendour of their own plastic seat, seems far away. Then, suddenly, it looms. Rather it sprawls squat and fat like some kind of massive primordial slug fallen on its side, foot curled to head. Once within its billowing innards you could be anywhere. Think the Gabba. On steroids.
Those who prefer their cricket on a maidan, at a club, in a village or a meadow, near a beach or a tree, under the gaze of a mountain or a gasometer, or in front of a starring pavilion and a supporting cast of stands, are unlikely to feel at home here.
This is a stage for cricket as spectacle, a place to come and bay for and against gladiators, and where the batting of an eyelid – much less a ball – can and will be analysed by the 132,000 watching on the big screens until it has been drained of all meaning, real and imagined. Is it a place fit for a men’s World Cup final, white-ball cricket’s spectacle among spectacles? Indubitably.
On Friday it will be the scene of, comparatively, a much smaller deal. Afghanistan and South Africa will play their last league match of the tournament here. Barring events that would make Bollywood scriptwriters blanche in disbelief, the Afghans are going home. The South Africans have secured a semifinal against Australia at the Eden Gardens next Thursday.
But it will be watched nonetheless – most keenly if South Africa bat second, a role in which they have failed to convince so far in the tournament. Should they bat first, the contest could well be decided by the time the sun sets over Ahmedabad. South Africa have won 62.57% of all ODIs in which they have batted first, and 65.52% of all those they have played in India when they have batted first. This year they have 90.91% of those in which they have batted first. Ergo, South Africa have been significantly more successful when they have batted first.
Also to be noted, considering Ravindra Jadeja took 5/33 against them in Kolkata on Sunday, is how they cope with Rashid Khan and the rest of Afghanistan’s crack spin attack. Whatever they do, the South Africans won’t want to make a bad memory at a place they hope to return to for the final on November 19.
Afghan supporters will look for signs of life in the wake of Glenn Maxwell hammering an undefeated 201 against them at the Wankhede on Tuesday. Not only did Maxwell hit his way into cricket’s big book of classic performances, he also took away from Afghanistan what looked for all money like their fifth win in eight matches as well as their fourth victory over teams considered stronger than them. With that went much of the credit the Afghans had earned for beating Pakistan, England and Sri Lanka, former World Cup champions all.
And Afghanistan, not only as a team but as a country that is in the news alarmingly often for horrific and harrowing reasons that go way beyond cricket, can use all the positivity it can find. One such reason is the treatment of women in that society. It would seem an obvious topic for questions asked of their players at press conferences – until the likely consequences of their answers for family members in Afghanistan is considered.
There is politics at play, too, in the very existence of The World’s Biggest Cricket Stadium in this far flung place in western India, far from the brighter lights of the bigger cities. Which is not to necessarily cast aspersions on how it, along with the rest of the solid new infrastructure rising all over Ahmedabad, came to be here. Would that more elected representatives, if they reach high office, remember where they came from and who put them there.
“Say that cricket has nothing to do with politics and you say that cricket has nothing to do with life,” John Arlott said. He knew more than a little about cricket, politics, life, and everything else. What he might have made of The World’s Biggest Cricket Stadium would have been good to know.
Squads:
Afghanistan Squad: Rahmanullah Gurbaz, Ibrahim Zadran, Rahmat Shah, Hashmatullah Shahidi(c), Azmatullah Omarzai, Mohammad Nabi, Rashid Khan, Ikram Alikhil(w), Mujeeb Ur Rahman, Noor Ahmad, Naveen-ul-Haq, Fazalhaq Farooqi, Riaz Hassan, Abdul Rahman, Najibullah Zadran
South Africa Squad: Quinton de Kock(w), Temba Bavuma(c), Rassie van der Dussen, Aiden Markram, Heinrich Klaasen, David Miller, Marco Jansen, Keshav Maharaj, Kagiso Rabada, Lungi Ngidi, Tabraiz Shamsi, Gerald Coetzee, Andile Phehlukwayo, Reeza Hendricks, Lizaad Williams
