How there is a 99.8% chance that Champions Trophy is fixed?

Three matches into the Champion’s Trophy, I got a message with bookie predictions of all the matches. It made following the tournament so much more fun. Each and every prediction has come true till now, except a couple of rain affected matches. I am really not excited about today’s big final, do not feel like watching it also!

Here are the predictions and against that the actual results.

      1.       India – SA, India wins              India won

      2.       Pak – WI, WI wins                   WI won

      3.       Eng – Aus, Eng wins                 Eng won

      4.       SL – NZ, NZ wins                     NZ won

      5.       Pak – SA, SA wins                    SA won

      6.       India – WI, India wins              India won

      7.       Aus – NZ, Aus wins                  Washout, rain

      8.       Eng – SL, Eng wins                   SL won, forced due to match 7

      9.       WI – SA, WI wins                     Match tied, rain

      10.   India – Pak, India wins              India won

      11.   Eng – NZ, Eng wins                    Eng won

      12.   SL – Aus, SL wins                      SL won

      13.   Eng – WI semis, Eng wins          Eng won, but against SA

      14.   India – SL semis, India wins       India won

      15.   India – Eng finals, India wins      ???

• Prediction was for India to win all their matches, it happened. 
• Prediction was for Pakistan to lose all their matches, it happened.
• Prediction was for India and England to top their groups and meet in final, it happened.
• Game 7 & 8 discrepancy – Game 7 was a washout, but made SL’s position tricky. Now they would not have qualified winning only one game as predicted (based on NRR). So the result of Game 8 had to be reversed so as to have an India – SL final as predicted
• Game 9 & 13 discrepancy – Game 9 was severely rain affected. We all know how the match got tied, Pollard getting out and rain coming immediately after with the teams tied on D/L score. As a result SA qualified for the semis instead of WI ahead on NRR. However, that did not deter an England victory in the semis.

Is it all a coincidence you tell me? Let us do some math in that case. Forget the first three matches as I got the message only before the fourth match. Forget matches 7, 8 and 9 as explained above. Still 8 match results were predicted correctly. If we assign 0.5 as the probability for any team winning, the probability of 8 predictions coming true would be 0.5^8 = 0.004 or 0.4%! If India win today, the number will become 0.2%. Would I be able to make a statement like “The entire champion’s trophy was fixed with 99.8% probability” and get away with it? J

(For all the skeptics, please do watch the “Fallen Heroes” series on youtube. It will be an eye opener. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LBI4figu67c)