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Three weeks into this World Cup and we're just over half way into the group stage. That's a ludicrous sentence which we've gone into before, but at the very least you'd have thought some sort of picture would be emerging about the likely contenders and yet none has emerged. The fancied runners have all raised more doubts about their ability to bring it home than they have laid down a marker.

Everyone thought India's batting would be so powerful as to render all attacks worthless, but they keep dicking about with the order and they've suffered three major collapses which has allowed sides to get at them. South Africa are guilty of the same and have lost the one man - Imran Tahir - who gave them that one element they've been lacking since reintroduction. England haven't managed to put two parts of the game together in a single match yet and while New Zealand have some lower-middle order batsmen seemingly intent on launching bombs all over the sub-continent, that's pretty much all they've got. Sri Lanka are almost the reverse and rely on the top three or four for the runs and don't have anything lower down while the West Indies lack up to four players to make the grade, well though Kemar Roach has bowled. Pakistan, like England, are as likely to beat themselves as they are anyone else and none of the others are really capable, even though Ireland, Holland and Bangladesh have played nice cameos.

All of which means that by doing nothing particularly badly and nothing particularly well, Australia are going to win yet another World Cup and mainly by default.