First impression

All teams except SA and Ireland have played two matches. Weekend saw two interesting matches: SL Vs Pak and India Vs Eng. Rest all matches have been onesided except maybe Eng Vs Netherlands. Eng, India,Pak and SL have advantage of coming across close situations which might be helpful in knock out stage.

If you ask me to take my neck out and predict a winner: South Africa. Reason variety of their bowling attack and experience batting. Only weakness seems to be long tail and lack of allrounders. we in past have seen great SA allrounders like Boucher, Pollock, klusener. Now only kallis is left but with injuries bowling slow. Also their usual bugbear of choking can go against them. But they have strong potential to beat everyone.

Australia is second favorite with good bowling lineup and allround abilities of watson. Batting looks out of form but with players like Ponting, Clarke you cannot rule them getting back to form.

Pakistan looks next solid team with dangerous players like afridi, razzak , akmal giving great allround depth to batting. Misbah, Umar, Younis form sound middle order. Openers seem inexprienced but can give fast starts. Bowling is good as well.

India will be lucky to grab fourth slot in Semis unless their bowling and fieldling improves. Batting has clicked but bowling unit is below par except zaheers second spell against england. So unless bhajji, or someone else picks up we might see teams scoring heavily and batting under pressure while chasing or just like what we saw at banglore. England lost their nerve so we could save a point.

Srilanka's spin looks ordinary. Malinga fitness will be crucial. Batting also had chinks. But since they will be playing in their country they can easily reach semis if malinga is fit

England had advantage of playing hard cricket so their only road ahead is to improve. Their bowling is underconfident. Batting looks good. But mentally seem brittle. so you might not bet them going past QF.

New Zealand will reach QF but no more. Nothing extaordinary from team yet.

WI have lost Bravo and will find tough to go to next stage by knocking over bangladesh despite great perfomance against netherlands. If gayle is found early by bangladesh, then we can see some upset at Dhaka. But mostly will be last QF team.

Bangladesh can cause upset against WI if lucky to get gayle early. Batted not so except Tamim . Bowling has not clicked as well but have crowd support.

Zimbabve is on revival and will definitely give some established teams some scare. But they will be better off than most of minnows

Ireland and Netherlands have european ethics and built. But they lack confidence and experience. They do have one or two good players but will be force by 2019 WC.

Kenya after so many years of World cup exp flatter to deceive with same set of old players. Their cricket needs revamp

Canada should have been replaced by Afganistan to make interesting viewing.