Right, I think I've worked it out and we're only two days in.
In essence the games we need to watch involve any of the top eight teams in clashes with either Zimbabwe or Bangladesh, depending on which group they're in. If the higher ranked side wins it's almost guaranteed a place in the quarter finals.
So India, after their routine evisceration of Bangladesh can now all put their feet up, not just Sehwag, and relax. The job is basically done. They will beat Ireland and the Netherlands, and whether or not they win any of their matches against England, West Indies and South Africa their serene passage is not in doubt.
Today, therefore, constitutes the one and only potential banana skin for Australia until we all go into knock out mode sometime before Christmas. As a partisan and mean spirited Englishman, it is a day on which I shall be keenly watching with my Test Match Sofa confreres for signs of an Aussie collapse.
It isn't just a long standing animus generated by years of being patronized about how we English are too feeble minded and cowardly even to grapple saltwater crocodiles with our bare hands while insouciantly carting off native Australians to correctional facilities for sterilization. Goddammit, we're so soft we don't even dispose of poisonous snakes in between getting the kids their breakfast cereal. (But somehow Bodyline was disgracefully ruthless).
Nor is it solely born from the bitter, fatalistic sense of inferiority that befalls me whenever some jovial "larrikin" waltzes into a party with tight shorts, bronzed skin and easy banter and whisks away the girl you've been eyeing up for three hours.
To use their own lazy vernacular "look yer know mate, you can take Liz Hurley. She and I would never have worked out what with her Keynesian approach to public spending cuts regardless of the massive social cost and probable approval of a privatization agenda (though I didn't have time to confirm or deny this hypothesis as Shane doesn't mess around)."
I can even forgive their bizarre penchant for retaining an arbitrarily appointed plutocrat from a far away land as their head of state. Strewth (I'm doing it again), even we English have been known to make that mistake.
But there are two very strong reasons why a fourth consecutive Australian triumph in the World Cup would be a disaster for human kind.
Currently, Aussies only weep invented mawkish tears over one piece of badly designed head gear; the Baggy Green. I have it on sound authority that a fourth consecutive World Cup triumph will enshrine "The Stiff Green" in a newly invented tradition. Children as young as 7 will venerate David Hussey , and a whole new era of earnest tedium will envelop us all.
And secondly, England's crushing Ashes triumph looked to have dealt a fatal blow to Tony Grieg's endlessly infuriating "limited edition" memorabilia, trailed ad nauseam on Channel Nine ever since Australia started winning again, featuring unrecognisable representations of Steve Waugh , Glenn McGrath , Adam Gilchrist et al enjoying one or other epoch making moment. These hyperbolically priced inanities offend the soul more than any ponzi scheme.
Zimbabwe, of all teams, therefore, has it in its power to land a blow not just for the underdog but for every right thinking human on the planet. So, whoever your God, or rationalist guru, spare a moment today, and pray, meditate or simply add your will to the wind of change. The Tunisians have done it. The Egyptians have done it. It's time for the cricket community to unite and overthrow its own obstinate dictator.
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