1. South Africa’s poor show
The South African side is always known to choke at the knockout stages of the World cup, but this time around they have found the going tough from the beginning of the World Cup. They faced the firm favourites England in their first encounter, the hosts brought their A game and humbled the Proteas side. Bangladesh too brought the heat as the also defeated South Africa comprehensively. It went from bad to worse for them when they locked horns against India in their next match. The Indian side was relentless and they proved to be too much for a struggling South Africa side. South Africa now are in a must-win situation and have to win most of their matches from their last 6 to have any chance of reaching the semis.
2. Pakistan beating England
Pakistan was up against the Favourites England after getting embarrassed by Windies at Trent Bridge. Almost everyone had written Pakistan off, but they stunned the gun England side and defeated them in front of their home crowd. Pakistan played fearless cricket and shocked everyone, they notched up their second highest total in World Cup history only a few days after they had scored their second-lowest total in world cup history at the same ground.
3. Mitchell Starc’s No ball to Chris Gayle
Cricket is a game of fine margins, and over the years several technologies have been introduced to reduce the errors in the game. Starc dismissed Gayle in the early stages of the West Indian innings but the replays showed that the previous delivery should have been given a no-ball by umpire Chris Gaffney as Starc had overstepped the line. Ultimately Aussies won the match by just 15 runs, but who knows if that no ball had been given and Gayle continued batting the result could have been in favour of the windies. This incident raised a lot of Eyebrows as several past and present players questioned the role of umpiring in cricket.
4. Afghanistan failing to chase the Sri Lankan target
Afghanistan missed a golden opportunity to knockout Sri Lanka in the Cricket World Cup. The two Asian sides faced each other at Cardiff, where it was the Afghan side that bowled brilliantly and restricted Sri Lanka for a modest 202. The Afghan side crumbled under pressure and lost the match by 34 runs following the Duckworth and Lewis method and failed to capitalise on their bowling effort.
5. India playing Bhuvneshwar Kumar instead of Mohammad Shami
It was almost certain that captain Kohli will play Shami in the starting 11 of their opening encounter as the second seamer. But Kohli made a surprising decision as he picked Bhuvi. Shami had been in brilliant form in New Zealand And Australia, he was also the man of the series in the ODI series against New Zealand but Kohli backed Bhuvi and amazed everyone.
