One-Day Mataram

At the 2007 ICC Cricket World Cup, a refreshing departure from tradition has been the fact that teams are playing warm-up matches amongst themselves rather than with club or invitational teams. While these warm-up matches are inconsequential from an actual contest point of view (and are indeed not even officially classified as ODIs), they do give an opportunity for the players to get some practice against players who are good enough to represent their countries. This is obviously a good thing since a batsman would not like to just spend time in the middle, facing up to a bowler who dishes up rubbish... or a bowler would love an opportunity to get his line and length fine tuned in match conditions against a batsman who can give him something to think about.

Of course, it also gives a much more valuable feedback to the coach who can use the data from these warm-up matches to decide who is good enough and who needs some more tender loving care of the nets! I am, of course, referring to Virender Sehwag who would have carted club bowlers around the park but was found wanting against even the Dutch bowlers. And in Sehwag's case, the next Indian warm-up match against West Indies will be the best data-collection exercise that Greg Chappell could have asked for before settling on an opening pair for the real thing... i.e. the World Cup matches.