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By Will 3 years ago, at the end of April Add your comment below
You can come out now, it’s safe. The interminable has finally been put back into hybernation for another blissful four years, while the ICC scratch their chins and wonder how they can make it even worse. They really will struggle to produce anything quite so flawed and farcical as the 2007 World Cup which has been strung out over the past 47 days, like a terminal patient on a life support machine.
I’m so glad it ended as it did, too. There was a hope (or fear, depending on the levels of cynicism germinating inside you) that the final would sweep all the controversy of the tournament under one, big, happy carpet. But it didn’t. It ended in complete, incomparable farce. No one person was at fault for the last rites, when Australia’s celebrations were cut short – forcing them back into the dark of night to bowl another few overs. True, Aleem Dar ought not to have officiated in such a rigid manner and shown some semblance of logic – Sri Lanka were not going to win the game. Everyone knew that. But that is Dar’s way, and it is uncomfortable criticising umpires’ roles. They have a thankless task at the best of times and are first in the firing line.
Who’s fault was it, then? Anyone watching from afar – even if knowledgeable of cricket eccentricities – would have found it quite astonishingly bizarre that a side could be allowed off for bad light, seemingly handing the win to the opposition, only for both sides to be forced back onto the field. In pitch blackness. Cricket simply does not help itself half the time. Today should have showcased the best players in the world, demonstrating what a remarkable sport cricket is. Instead, the sport was reduced to an embarrassing pantomime.
Was the Cup doomed from the start? Is it the flawed idea of cricket having a World Cup, full stop? After all, one-day cricket remains the cheap, frilly cousin of Tests, so how can it be described by some as the sport’s greatest event? It palpably is not. It is a frenetic exercise to embezzle as much money into the pockets of the ICC and the organisers as is feasibly possible, at the expense of everyone – especially the developing countries and the locals hosting the tournament.
Call me cynical, and you will, but covering a tournament so closely has inevitable consequences. Australia are the best one-day side in the world, and probably the best in history too. But we have learned little else from this drab event other than the ICC are even more greedy than we first suspected, and Australia’s opponents – Sri Lanka apart – aren’t even close to chasing their coat tails.
Tags: 2007-world-cup, disaster, embezzlement, ICC |
It’s finally over. WC ‘07 just kept getting progressively worse, it was really quite pathetic. ‘The World Cup that wasn’t’ just about sums it up.
I think they should stick to having World Cups in England. I quite enjoyed WC ‘99.
Nicely written, though.
I think 20-20 cricket might pose a severe threat to the long term health of the 50 over game. Given that can only benefit Test cricket, I’m all in favour of it.
This was the first CWC that I have paid more than cursory attention to. I’ve got to say I’ve enjoyed having cricket available every day, and I think I’ve learned to appreciate the one-day format better. Still, if the last two months’ antics were the pinnacle of the game then I wouldn’t be a fan, simple as that.
I think Nas summed it up nicely: “Australia are the winners but cricket has been the loser”. The ICC need to go away and have a long, hard think about the criticism they have had, and work out how to do better next time. Unfortunately, I think that the ICC will actually go away and have a long hard think about the amount of money they have made, and work out how to increase that next time.
Most of us have spent most of the time delivering deserved bombs to the ICC, but let’s pause for a moment – who is/are the ICC? They can only be representative of the nations at the Cup itself. It is up to us, in one sense, to do something about it. Write to your local board of control, by whatever name it is known, and let them know directly what you think. Ranting to and agreeing with each other on blog sites is all very well, but of itself cannot produce the answer.
Tell them that you lost interest; tell them why you lost interest; tell them that you are now in imminent danger of developing a profound interest in something else, preferably in competition with cricket; tell them that you will not watch it again if it follows the same formula, and that you will definitely turn off all of the ads and bocott all of the sponsors.
Disgusting, money grubbing, self satisfied, blinkered fools that they are.
Will, I take your point that this World Cup was lacklustre and “drab.” I agree too that it was organised poorly, but that was because the Local Organizing Committees were not sufficiently autonomous.
But Will, I think that when it comes down to it, the World Cup sucked because the best teams on planet earth – minus Australia and not counting the Minnows – did not deliver. What better illustrations of this than Pakistan and India fizzling out and dying before D-Day.
Besides, too many stars were on battery power so they often died in mid-match.
In short, the Cup bottomed out due to the inefficiencies on the field of play, not in the boardrooms.
* Ticket prices
* Decision to ban Youtube clips
* Bans on brining in external food and drink
* Bans on music instruments
* Structure of the tournament
* Length of the tournament
* Death of Bob Woolmer
* Tyranny of official rulings
* Blanket marketing, and protection of ‘ICC Sanctioned’ sponsors
I’m certain there were other problems, but I’m dreadfully hungover with a pounding headache.
It was a sterile World Cup – run by governing bodies with names such as International Cricket Council and Global Cricket Corporation with a sole focus of racking in the millions they probably earned from this venture.
At what cost? Cricket has most likely gone backwards in the Caribbean, with the intimate charming stadiums of old replaced by concrete monsters. Locals seemed disinterested, disillusioned and shut out from a tournament that should have been theirs. The ICC can pass the buck all they wish, but ultimately they are the body with the responsibility to ensure common sense existed in this World Cup.
However evidently common sense is a thing unknown to the ICC. The tournament was too long, and poorly structured with two round robin playoffs. My proposal would be to have two groups of about 6 or 7 teams play each other once, with the top team in both groups go through to meet in a final. It cuts out the bullshit, ensures the best two teams of the competition make it through to the final, whilst continuing the presence of the minnow nations.
The final epitomised the problems – lack of forward thinking, lack of common sense, lack of anything. To have the showcase of cricket cut down to 38 overs is appalling – I’m certain the crowd would not have minded coming back tomorrow to ensure they witness a full contest in splendid weather. Once they were committed to a late start, a late finish was a certainty, with professional athletes in one of the largest sports in the world forced to play cricket in the dark.
The ICC are in the dark too – committed to draconian ideas, and hellbent on milking the cash cow that cricket has become. Those at the top should in the very least accept responsibility for their actions, rather than deflect criticism.
The final supplied the only ingredients that could make the world cup any worse – rain delays and a lack of understanding of the rules.
The World Cup has been an unmitigated disaster from the start. The money spent on needless concrete stadia rather than on encouraging youngsters to play the game. It doesn’t take a genius to work out which of those two options the West Indies needs more. Yet there is apparently more interest in the profits from construction contracts.
The format of the tournament was designed for the faceless Indian advertising agencies whose love for the game is shown by the way they prevent you watching crucial moments by inane sponsor logos. Having at least two games a day up to the semi finals is the most obvious way of improving and shortening the tournament – preventing its abiding memory from being forced to watch one sided game after one sided game on a daily basis.
Let us not forget that the world cup was originally based on the principle of knock out – the format that most focusses the mind, eliminates match-fixing in “dead rubbers”, and creates interest for the crowds (at the ground and on tv).
And yet, the ICC has already sold the tv rights to the next two world cups with the same stupid format locked in. Greed again prevails over the presentation of a positive image of the game to its biggest audience.
It’s time for the ICC to go for professionals with experience in actually running sport rather than the current bunch of tax dodgers in Dubai. It’s difficult to imagine that one person in ICC towers has a knowledge of a succesful marketing strategy or a knowledge of what really works as tv content worldwide.
Instead the ICC is government by compromise and vote bank. It’s all about creating pots of money to spend on needless, unaudited projects – and nothing to do with putting a bat in the hand of as many as possible worldwide.
It is time for Malcolm Speed and his commercial cronies to go. Instead of criticising the format, they should be accepting that it was their format, devised by them to serve their needs.
The fact that it started with the death of Woolmer, is kind of indicative of the whole thing. The cup itself died, and should have been laid to rest there and then.
Well said all, your comments are valid and true. I do believe in the idea of a World Cup in cricket. Bangladesh and Ireland did themselves and the sport proud by showing such fighting spirit and some of the best performances of the whole event. We need and should have a platform, where we can all get together, big and small, to measure ourselves against each other. Unfortunately, of the Test teams, only Aus performed well with any consistency. The ICC has shot itself in the foot here, reducing the joyous, beautiful islands of the WIndies into joke-hosts. What a bloody shame. I love my cricket but this shambles reduced me to tears and abject boredom. Am now so glad I did not blast my savings on a ticket to the Caribeann.
Last night at the final, I had the best fun playing hide-and-seek with the little kiddies in the carpark and eating spicy fish sandwiches with the WAGs. Say no more, squire.
It was embarassing to watch… I actually felt sorry for the Aussies. And poor Sri Lanka – it was salt in the wound really to come and finish those three overs.
It was a fitting end to the worst ever World Cup. I tried to get excited about it but couldn’t. Sure, being an England fan means that you tend to go into these tournaments with little or no optimism but even as a cricket fan I felt let down.
Oh well. Onwards and upwards. At least we’ve got some Test match cricket to look forward to, eh?
“Is it the flawed idea of cricket having a World Cup?” Absolutley not. The previous WC’s that I can remember were all great affairs, and even though I only got to see a little of it, I enjoyed it. And I notice that there’ve been plenty of complaints, but not too many positive ideas on how to improve it- the most that everyone seems to be able to come up with is platitudes about how Malcolm Speed’s just in it for the money.
Surely all the great minds on this blog can come together and agree on an appropriate format for future world cups.
I would keep 4 groups of 4 with the top 2 qualifying to 2 more groups of 4, with the top two in each group then going to the semifinals.
This way teams such as Ireland, Bangladesh and Kenya would still have a chance to make it to the second stage without leading to a lot of matches meaningless as they did in this tournament. Groups of 4 in the second stage would keep the intensity levels up and recreate the feel you had in the first few world cups. The only thing I’m uncertain about is whether or not teams should carry points forward or not. On balance I would say probably not.
One point which I think should be made is that although the ICC screwed up things such as ticket prices, music restrictions, youtube etc etc, the problems caused by the format were as much to do with the poor performances of so many teams. If India, Pakistan the West Indies, England and South Africa had shown up, the super eights could even have carried an Ireland or a Bangladesh.
Got to get the quarter finals back. World Cup quarter finals, even 2nd rounds, whether they be in football, rugby or cricket have a lot more gravitas, drama and excitement. All fixtures are ‘qualifiers’ until you get to the main action of knock out. It’s more of an occasion, they are more memorable – and therefore surely, more marketable.
I’m worried that if that format is locked in, they’ll be no reviews. The only issue the Indian-dominated ICC will have with the current format is that India weren’t in it. You’ve got an audience of tens of millions guaranteed for a Super 8’s India fixture. I suspect that will maintain the format for the next tournament – but, they’ll speed it up a bit, (ie two games a day).
Jim – they used the quarter final system in 1996 and it was a disaster. The first 3/4th of the tournament was a waste of time. England for instance made it through to the quarters even though they lost to all 3 test nations in their group and still made the quarters.
One thing I’ve thought of is maybe keep the first group stage as it is and then have best of 3 quarter-finals and best of 3 semi’s before a one off final. Teams playing each other more than once would allow rivalries to build up and prevent one-off flukes in the quarters.
I was at the Super Eights in Grenada – and just returned from the final in Barbados: despite all the traumas, I had a stonking time. The people in the stands, the locals, the level of local involvement were all superb.
The organization and quality of the grounds were good. Food/beer prices were OK. Unfortunately the cricket was too often a sideshow the experience of cricket in the Caribbean. The closest game I saw was a 60 run win in the final.
Ultimately the 50 over game will only be kept around for Indian TV where they can show more commercials. The reality – which must be dawning on the ICC, is that within a decade the format will be dead, and 20/20 will become the short form of choice.
Recommended reading, I can’t disagree with Gideon Haigh, the best writer on cricket around at the moment.
http://sport.guardian.co.uk/cricketworldcup2007/story/0,,2068506,00.html
I have to say I can’t disagree more with Gideon Haigh’s assessment that a lack of first class experience is responsible for the poor standard of cricket at the world cup. Historically the great players have almost always made their debut’s before the age of 20 and I think this still applies.
If you look at Australia, Warne, Gillespie, McGrath, Ponting, Tait, Brett Lee all made their debut’s early and haven’t played that much first class cricket. I think the academy system actually does work.
Even in the England team, for every Saj Mahmood who I think gives young talent a bad name, there are Alistair Cook, Ravi Bopara and Monty Panesar who have taken to international cricket really well.
I think the other teams just need to get their act together.
I like shariq’s suggestion that good teams face each other more than once.
If it weren’t for the need to let the fans know where to go, I think the best format for cricket would be a swiss system tournament, where teams are matched against teams on the same number of points in each round (or as close as is possible). Those who lose a game can come back up the ladder with a string of wins; teams like Ireland who stage an upset get glory but have to keep the streak running against progressively tougher opposition if they aren’t to fade back to the bottom; and every round there’s one or two top of the table clashes between teams on fire. A swiss system tournament of six rounds is more than long enough to reliably sort out the top and bottom four teams of a 16 team set, so the whole thing could be done in less time than the 1992 world cup. The only catch is that you need 8 cricket grounds that are reasonably close to each other.
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