RYAN VREDE reviews a round of fixtures in which South Africa rattled then rolled, and India established themselves as clear favourites.

The Springboks making the Rugby World Cup final will do little to improve the interest in a Cricket World Cup that is labouring along. But there have been several talking points to emerge nonetheless.

Orange ghosts haunt SA, but England’s Lions don’t. Now what? 

Losing to the Netherlands, then beating a star-studded England in the same week is so on brand for the Proteas at a World Cup.

Seven of the 11 players who lost to the Dutch at the T20 World Cup last year did so again a year later. Earlier this year they beat this same team by 126 runs and eight wickets in a bilateral series. World Cup pressure will do strange things to you.

The Proteas then followed that up with a demolition of England, who are now clinging on for survival. The defending champions conceded 399 runs and got rolled for 170 on a deck that a third-division clubby would have fancied a go on.

The Proteas have strengthened their chances of finishing in the top four with Saturday’s win. They’ve also awoken a nation’s heart. This is a familiar feeling that always ends in tears.

Like jilted lovers, we believe that this time will be different. On the surface, it appears it could be. They’ve crushed Australia and England. At the time of writing, they had five matches to play. They’re likely to have to win three of those to make the semi-finals. Two of those five matches are against Bangladesh and Afghanistan.

Surely they can’t stuff this up. Surely.

It’s India’s to lose

I don’t know who beats the hosts. New Zealand, unbeaten until they faced India on Sunday, were dealt with comfortably.

Incredibly, India have lost just 13 wickets in their five innings to date. What’s more, they’ve chased in all five, and done so for the most part without Shubman Gill, who was the top-ranked batter in the world coming into the tournament.

Add to this Virat Kohli’s standard World Cup brilliance, and the advantage of playing in front of tens of thousands of fans, and you’ve got a formidable opponent.

The most likely route to beating them appears to be winning the toss and restricting them to a sub-par score. Even then, they’ve got a bowling attack laden with match-winners.

Short of a self-inflicted implosion, I don’t see anyone beating them at this stage. This is India’s to lose.

England’s title defence in tatters  

They came into the tournament among the favourites. Now they find themselves likely having to win all five of their remaining matches to stay in it.

They still have to play India, Australia and Pakistan, and given their form, Sri Lanka and the Netherlands now look like more complex fixtures than they should be.

What’s happened to the defending champions? I suspect there are a combination of factors that have contributed to their underwhelming performances – the average form of their key players, and the inability of the selectors to find the right combinations among them.

Notably, their bowlers have leaked runs, conceding in excess of 280 runs in three of their four matches to date, including a tournament-record 399 against South Africa.

I don’t see them fixing the fundamental issues that plague them quickly. But they’ve been in deep water before and survived.

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