LONDON: Batting great Sunil Gavaskar says Eoin Morgan’s England will be theteam to beat at the World Cup, with home advantage giving them a vital edgeover his native India.
Top-ranked England recently outplayed Pakistan 4-0 in a one-day series tounderline their supremacy in the 50-over format.
The home side, who have never won one-day cricket’s biggest prize despitemaking three finals, in 1979, 1987 and 1992, open their campaign againstSouth Africa on Thursday at the Oval in London.
“England, not India, are the favourites for this World Cup,” Gavaskar toldAFP.
“They have been playing outstanding cricket over the last few years and infamiliar home conditions will be hard to beat,” said the former Indiacaptain.
Home advantage has been a big factor in recent editions of the showpieceevent, with hosts India winning the 2011 trophy and Australia emergingvictorious in Melbourne in 2015.
Since the start of 2018 England, who switched to a more aggressive brand ofcricket after their humiliating first-round exit four years ago, have comeout on top in ODI series against Australia, New Zealand, Sri Lanka andIndia.
Second-ranked India’s chances depend to a large extent on captain ViratKohli.
Kohli, the number one batsman in Test and ODIs, last year defied criticswho questioned his poor performance on the 2014 tour of England by hitting593 runs in the 2018 Test series even though India lost 4-1.
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But he has often received criticism over his captaincy, with pundits sayingthe 30-year-old leader often needs the experience of Mahendra Singh Dhonibehind the stumps.
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Kohli recently scored 464 runs in the Indian Premier League Twenty20tournament but his side Royal Challengers Bangalore ended bottom of theeight-team table.
“On an individual level he certainly can be as successful (in England) ashe was last year for sure,” said Gavaskar, who scored more than 10,000 Testruns.
“But a captain is only as good as his team and Dhoni’s presence takes a bigload off Kohli, especially after the first power play,” said Gavaskar, whowas part of India’s World Cup-winning team in 1983 under Kapil Dev.
Gavaskar, 69, also weighed in on the Indian team’s much-debated number fourslot, saying Lokesh Rahul should fill the position.
He was unwilling to be drawn into the debate of whether India shouldboycott their round-robin match against Pakistan amid political tensionsbetween the two hostile nations.
Doubts were cast over the much-anticipated match in Manchester on June 16after calls from many former India players and officials to forfeit theirmatch to their arch-rivals.
Relations between the two nuclear-armed South Asian countries nose-divedafter a suicide bombing in Indian-administered Kashmir in February killed40 Indian security personnel and was later claimed by the Pakistan-basedJaish-e-Mohammad.
India has long accused Islamabad of harbouring militants who launch attackson its soil but Pakistan has denied any role in the Pulwama attack, andPrime Minister Imran Khan offered cooperation in investigations if credibleevidence were provided by India.
“In a World Cup there is no option but to play all teams,” said a guardedGavaskar. -APP/AFP
