As most of you know, the Cricket World Cup will start tomorrow. The opening ceremony was yesterday but that is just a formality. It should be quite exciting with a few teams having a good change of taking the title. To make it more interesting Cricinfo have compared the age of all participating teams with another. In addition to that they have also compared the combined experience of each team. By combining these two factors, it gives you quite a good idea how developed each team is.
Canada have the oldest and youngest players in the tournament: John Davison, who will be 40 years and 286 days on February 19 and Nitish Kumar the youngest - a staggering 16 years and 274 days.
See the average of each team below:
Team - Average Age
Sri Lanka - 29.9
Australia - 29.3
England - 29.0
India - 28.7
Pakistan - 28.7
Ireland - 28.6
South Africa - 28.4
New Zealand - 28.3
Netherlands - 27.6
Canada - 27.6
Kenya - 27.5
West Indies - 27.2
Zimbabwe - 26.6
Bangladesh - 23.8
And which team has the most combined caps?
Team - Caps
India - 2070
Sri Lanka - 1863
Pakistan - 1389
New Zealand - 1277
Australia - 1265
West Indies - 1041
England - 1016
South Africa - 953
Bangladesh - 929
Zimbabwe - 829
Kenya - 822
Ireland - 455
Netherlands - 309
Canada - 225
Sachin Tendulkar is the only player who also played in the 1992 tournament. No wonder they have the most caps. Murali is also supposed to play in this World Cup. That is why SL have so many caps.
And finally, which team has the most combined caps that was played only in India, Sri Lanka, or Bangladesh.
Team - Caps
India - 1141
Sri Lanka - 856
Bangladesh - 513
New Zealand - 265
Pakistan - 254
Zimbabwe - 166
Australia - 160
England - 156
West Indies - 147
South Africa - 114
Kenya - 74
Ireland - 18
Netherlands - 5
Canada - 0
See the rankings as of Feb 6:
Team - Rating
Australia - 131
India - 119
Sri Lanka - 119
South Africa - 118
England - 109
Pakistan - 100
New Zealand - 91
Bangladesh - 66
West Indies - 66
Ireland - 39
Zimbabwe - 37
Netherlands - 17
Kenya - 0
Canada - 0
Somehow I don't think Australia will pull it off even though they are defending champions. A lot has happened over the past 4 years. I would thus say that India would be my best bet. Home advantage, a lot of experience, and overall they have a well balanced side.
Source: Cricinfo