The Joy of Six: calamitous Cricket World Cup campaigns
From Australia and South Africa choking at home to India’s 2007 shock and England’s woes, half a dozen CWC nightmaresThe year 2007 changed cricket, a transformation that pivoted on India’s performance in its two international tournaments – their early exit from the 50-over shindig and their triumph in the inaugural Twenty20 one. In a Caribbean World Cup that opened with four groups of four from which only two teams progressed, the competition’s defining day was not its concluding one – when Australia emphatically beat Sri Lanka to secure a third successive crown – but its fifth, on which Pakistan and India crashed to cataclysmic defeats, against Ireland and Bangladesh respectively. Pakistan’s tournament was then engulfed by tragedy with the death...