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).

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.

Shakib Al Hasan (C), Tamim Iqbal (Vc), Abdur Razzak, Imrul Kayes, Junaid Siddique, Mahmudullah, Mohammad Ashraful, Mushfiqur Rahim (Wk), Naeem Islam, Nazmul Hossain, Roqibul Hasan, Rubel Hossain, Shafiul Islam, Shahriar Nafees & Suhrawadi Shuvo

Ricky Ponting, Michael Clarke (C), Doug Bollinger, Brad Haddin (Wk), John Hastings, Nathan Hauritz, David Hussey, Mike Hussey, Mitchell Johnson, Brett Lee, Tim Paine (Wk), Steve Smith, Shaun Tait, Shane Watson & Cameron White

From bbc.co.uk/sports

The squad included the 11 players who played in the first Test at Centurion plus batsman Alviro Petersen, all-rounder Ryan McLaren and fast bowler Dale Steyn. Dropped from the original 15-man squad for the first Test was left-arm fast bowler Wayne Parnell. Steyn was due to play at Centurion but was withdrawn from the side because of a tight hamstring on the morning of the match.

The squad: Graeme Smith (capt), Hashim Amla, Mark Boucher, AB de Villiers, Friedel de Wet, JP Duminy, Paul Harris, Jacques Kallis, Ryan McLaren, Morne Morkel, Makhaya Ntini, Alviro Petersen, Ashwell Prince, Dale Steyn.