The sport of Cricket has evolved over the years adding an element of heightened excitement and thrill to the game and consequently an increase in popularity and fan following. With this, there has been an increase in web sites dedicated exclusively to the game.

Moreover, the ubiquity of mobile phones and the advancements in mobile technology has not only seen the rise of mobile versions of the same websites but also the development of mobile applications offering cross platform support.

Cricket Companion has been the premier choice of cricket fans around the world when it comes to getting the cricket experience on the palm of one’s hand. What makes Cricket Companion stand out from amongst the rest of the crowd is not just its catchy and appealing as well as user friendly interface but the detailed and in-depth source of information it is for everything related to cricket.

With downloads close to 7 million globally and everyday more downloads adding on to the tally in thousands, Cricket Companion is a ‘numero uno’ in cricket related mobile applications.

Some of the features released in the app are:

• Ball by Ball coverage of all international cricket matches
• Detailed Scorecards, Player Profiles, Graphs and other Statistical information on the game
• Textual match commentary and match highlights
• Latest news, features, opinion posts and blogs from the world of cricket
• ‘Cricket Genius Competition’ native only to Cricket Companion; with the users vying for a chance to win an assortment of prizes for having the most points
• Custom set-up of Alerts/Notifications, via sound or vibration, for boundaries and wickets

The cricket world cup played in March 2011 set new records for Cricket Companion with the application registering 635,873 downloads during the 43 day tournament. The app registered 194,205,311 page views with 9,381,386 visits and 2,411,762 absolute unique visitors that broke all previous viewership records.

Seeing the immense potential and user adoption for the app, the Cricket Companion Team has launched a version of the app for the Apple Platform. The app is available at Apple’s iTunes store for free download:

South Africa vs Bangladesh

This match is the world cup final for Bangladesh. If they win this, they achieve something that would really lift this cricket loving nation and would do wonders to their future progress in the cricketing world.

For South Africa the game is more of a psychological concern rather than a statistical one. They are already safely in the quarter finals but with the Bangladeshi spinners ready to tweak their fingers and the roaring crowd to tackle, they could really get a good feel of the big games before they actually arrive and convince themselves that they are not ‘chokers’. A loss would mean they would enter the knock out stage on a low which they definitely don’t want to.

Equally anxious for the result would be England and West Indies supporters. It is more likely one of them has to sit out if Bangladesh wins so they would be supporting and praying for a South African victory.

Pakistan vs Australia

This game doesn’t reflect on the tables but it does reflect on the minds. Australia and Pakistan have had a history in the world cup. Pakistan and Australia played their first ever world cup game against each other in 1975. Australia emerged the winners but Pakistan took revenge in 1979. The teams never met in the 1983 event but played a historic semi-final in 1987 where Australia edged over Pakistan in front of the Pakistani home crowd in their cricket headquarters- The Gaddafi Stadium. Pakistan then beat Australia in 1992 and eventually won that world cup. The next match between the teams was anther historic venture in 1999 where Wasim Akram led Pakistan to victory in a group encounter. However Australia ridiculed Pakistan in the final and bowled them out for 132 to lift the cup in 1999.

The last time Pakistan played Australians was in 2003 when Australia lost four quick wickets but a magnificent innings from Andrew Symonds surprised Pakistan and they eventually didn’t qualify for the super sixes. This game would still be alive in the minds of the players who were there in the 2003 world cup – Younis Khan, Shoaib Akhtar and Shahid Afridi. However even more bruised would be the coach – Waqar Younis who was the captain at that time and faced the music after being beaten by Australia.

For Waqar and his team a win over Australia would mean a huge psychological uplift and this has reflected in the way they are preparing for the encounter with Waqar suggesting in a press interview that he is more focused on the Australia game then the quarter final planning because they believe if they can beat Australia they can beat anyone.

On the other hand, the Australians are also a bit frustrated at the moment. The broken screens and the balls thrown to the ground reflect the mindset of the team conveyed through their captain. They are not getting the attention that they usually get in the big tournaments. They have all the right reasons to be angry – with 34 successive wins in world cup games and with 4 world cups in the bag; they are still being written off by most pundits. This is their time to show the world how dangerous they are. Their challenge would be to live through Pakistan’s spin attack and their display against the spinners would also set the tone for their future encounters with Asian sides in the knock out stages.

This win and the earlier tie between India and England, means that Group B is now open to all sorts of interesting permutations. To add icing to the cake Netherlands have also shown enough guts to get scores closer to 300 on their day and Bangladesh can surprise any team on their home conditions. The current situation with the points in

Group B is as under:

Teams                     P    W    L    NR    T    Pts      NRR

India                      2      1      0    0      1      3        +0.87

England                 3    1       1     0      1      3    +0.04

West Indies         2    1        1    0       0      2    +1.88

South Africa        1    1       0    0       0      2     +0.77

Ireland                  2    1       1     0       0      2      -0.21

Bangladesh          2    1      1     0       0      2      -0.60

Netherlands        2    0      2    0       0      0    -2.28

Now let’s have a look at the matches to follow in Group B:
03 March: Netherlands vs South Africa
04 March: Bangladesh vs West Indies
06 March: England vs South Africa
06 March: India vs Ireland
09 March: India vs Netherlands
11 March: West Indies vs Ireland
11 March: Bangladesh vs England
12 March: India vs South Africa
14 March: Bangladesh vs Netherlands
15 March: South Africa vs Ireland
17 March: England vs West Indies
18 March: Ireland vs Netherlands
19 March: Bangladesh vs South Africa
20 March: India vs West Indies

Top 4 teams qualify for the quarter finals and we could very well be in for some surprises in this group.

This is Malinga’s second hat trick in world cups. His other one was against South Africa in 2007. With this performance Malinga became the first bowler in World Cup history to take two hat-tricks.

Just a day before Malinga’s hat trick, we saw Kemar Roach take 3 wickets in 3
successive balls against Netherlands to become the first West Indian to take a hat trick in World Cup.

Hat-trick is a very rare feast, however, the last time we saw two hat-tricks in a
world cup tournament was in 2003 performed by Chaminda Vaas and Brett Lee.

Chaminda Vaas was the first Sri Lankan to score a Hat-trick in ODI on 08 Dec 2001 and then repeated the feast again in World Cup 2003.

Malinga shares the honor of taking two hat tricks in ODI cricket with Chaminda Vaas, Wasim Akram and Saqlain Mushtaq – a list dominated by Sri Lanka and Pakistan.

Overall there have been seven hat-tricks in the world cup with Malinga’s latest effort now coming in the 7th place. Before Malinga this rare achievement was done by Chetan Sharma (India -1987), Saqlain Mushtaq (Pakistan – 1999), Brett Lee (Australia – 2003), Malinga (SriLanka – 2007) and Kemar Roach (West Indies- 2011).

Netherlands’ Ryan ten Doeschate innings of 119 runs is the second highest inning ever by a player from an associate nation after Dave Houghton’s 142 for Zimbabwe against New Zealand at Hyderabad in 1987.

The most interesting stat however is that Netherlands’ 292/6 is also the second highest total ever scored by any side against England at the World Cup, while West Indies leads the table with 300 run against England at Bridgetown in 2007.

The highlight of the innings was Sehwag’s thrilling knock of 175 runs off 40 balls. This was the fifth highest innings ever in a world cup. The list also features two other Indians- Ganguly’s 183 against SriLanka and Kapil Dev’s special knock of 175 against Zimbabwe that saved the day for India in the 1983 World Cup.

Another star of the day was Virat Kohli. His 100 runs off 83 balls made him the first Indian to score a century on debut in a World Cup Match.

William Porterfield (C), Andre Botha, Alex Cusack, George Dockrell, Trent Johnston, Nigel Jones, Ed Joyce, John Mooney, Kevin O’Brien, Niall O’Brien (wk), Boyd Rankin, Paul Stirling, Albert van der Merwe, Gary Wilson (wk) & Andrew White

From bbc.co.uk/sports

Mahendra Dhoni (C & Wk), Virender Sehwag (vc), Sachin Tendulkar, Gautam Gambhir, Virat Kohli, Yuvraj Singh, Suresh Raina, Harbhajan Singh, Zaheer Khan, Munaf Patel, Praveen Kumar, Ashish Nehra, Ravichandran Ashwin, Yusuf Pathan & Piyush Chawla

From bbc.co.uk/sports

Andrew Strauss (C), James Anderson, Ian Bell, Tim Bresnan, Stuart Broad, Paul Collingwood, Eoin Morgan, Kevin Pietersen, Matt Prior (Wk), Ajmal Shahzad, Graeme Swann, James Tredwell, Jonathan Trott, Luke Wright & Michael Yardy

Ashish Bagai (C & Wk), Rizwan Cheema (vc), Harvir Baidwan, Khurram Chohan, John Davison, Parth Desai, Tyson Gordon, Ruvindu Gunasekera, Jimmy Hansra, Nitish Kumar, Henry Osinde, Hiral Patel, Balaji Rao, Zubin Surkari, Hamza Tariq & Karl Whatham

It is noted that Tyson Gordon is awaiting confirmation of Canadian citizenship, so 16 players have been named instead of 15.