Home Advantage: A distinct dream in World Cups

Home Advantage: A distinct dream in World Cups

The 2015 Cricket World Cup will be played in Australia and New Zealand. I know the event is far but the cricket fanatics have already started talking about the contenders. Team Australia and their fans have already tipped the host nation as the ultimate winner. According to many cricket experts, Australia have got players, who can rule the event. David Warner, Aaron Finch, Shane Watson, James Faulkner, Steven Smith, Mitchell Johnson and Glenn Maxwell are the leading players in the ODI format of the game . 

When MS Dhoni, the Indian captain, hit the six to win the World Cup at the Wankhede stadium in 2011, it was the first time in the history of this sport that a winning side was playing in front of its own crowd. Home advantage is a well discussed and pretty old formula in cricket . But, this is not true when it comes to World Cups. Apart from India that too in 2011, we haven’t seen even a single host nation, who has lifted the prestigious trophy in their own backyard. Let’s talk about basic numbers first. 

In the 10 World Cups so far, there have been two incidents where home teams have played in front of their crowd.

Apart from this, the home teams have failed to pass group stage on three instances (Australia 1992, England in 1999 and South Africa 2003). England have hosted 4 World Cups in the fifty over format so far but they haven’t won once yet.  West Indies played the first three finals, winning in '75 and '79 while they lost to India in 83. 

Australia, the team from down under, had a run of playing five finals out of six, from 1987 to 2007, winning four trophies, including a hat-trick. Moreover, the two most dominating sides in World Cricket never got a chance to host the event in their prime. Australians were the host country in 1992 and were still building a side which went on to rule the game for years later on. 

West Indies hosted the World Cup 24 years after they had last made it to a World Cup final.  The most important reason behind the visiting team’s domination in the mega event could be the knowledge of playing conditions.  I know cricket has varied playing conditions but the teams and their players’ ends up playing in all of them very often which makes the margin of an error minimum. 

The fifty over game is such that teams are provided with an easy wicket to equal the playing level field and moreover the participating players have knowledge of what to do in a certain country. The other intruding factors could be pressure and expectations. The most famous example of this trend is South Africa. They had a team which was full of champions in 2003 but were not able to cross the first hurdle. 

The most unpredictable format of the game that is T20 has had five world events till date with Sri Lanka being the only team to make it to the finale in 2012. This shows that cricket is a pressure game, which can even break the strongest of the personalities. We won’t see either Australia or New Zealand as the world champ if this trend continues in the upcoming event. However, records and trends are made to be change in the future and who knows 2015 could once again be a new trend setter.

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