As you glance down the top run scorers list for the ongoing World Cup, you can’t help but notice one anomaly: an Englishman! The only player from a team not in the semi-final, Kevin Pietersen is typical of everything not English in this World Cup. He is a fighter, scored consistently and is ready to take the fight to the opposition.

There is another anomaly: a West Indian. An even rarer sight. But Ramnaresh Sarwan, despite his failure in the last match against England, is marginally ahead of such players as Michael Clarke, Stephen Fleming, Adam Gilchrist and even Kumara Sangakkara.

These two players represent teams that promised much over the course of the last one-year and when the time to deliver came, buckled. They did not have enough support from players around them and that was the only consistent thing about their teams!

Compare this with the other players in the top ranks and you will notice that there are some rather high-ranking players from the teams in the semi-final. Of course that’s the reason they made it this far anyway.

Among the semi-finalists, there are some head to head comparisons that could prove interesting. For the two Australians in the top ten, there are two South Africans. Things get more interesting when you note that both captains are up there with Ponting at number 2 ahead of Jacques Kallis only on strike rate while Graeme Smith is at number six only 39 runs behind the two. The one man who has run away from everyone else of course is Matthew Hayden. His aggregate of 580 is only 113 runs behind Sachin Tendulkar’s record of 693 set in South Africa. The rate at which he is scoring runs that could fall in the semi-final itself!

Of the other two semi-finalists, Scott Styris finds himself as the lone Kiwi in the top ten while Sri Lanka has two representatives: captain Mahela Jayawardena and the stalwart Sanath Jayasuriya. Eleven runs separate the two teammates while Styris is ahead by over 50 runs.

The reason we are looking into this is to try to understand which teams have a better chance of winning their semi-finals. Sri Lanka looks favourites for more reasons than having two batters in the top ten. They have players like Murali and Vaas who have been there before and won the cup once. The pressure and expectations won’t be completely new to them. New Zealand has Craig McMillan and Stephen Fleming to call on their experiences from the 1999 semi-final loss to Pakistan and they would do well to remember their lessons well.

The South Africa versus Australia semi-final would be keenly contested and there are some old scores to settle there. The 1999 semi-final for one! Australia won’t let South Africa forget that day and there are some survivors from that match too. However strong they may be, Shaun Pollock, Jacques Kallis, Herschelle Gibbs and Mark Boucher won’t forget that too soon.

Four well matched teams with players in form. The Englishman only has Brian Lara’s run-out to hang on to for now!