The thing about cricket is that I can take it or I can leave it. I am not especially bothered about Test cricket – five days of cricket, often with no result – is simply too much for my butterfly mind. T20 is okay in small doses but I would always prefer a 50 or 40 over game. Long enough for a proper game of cricket, short enough to sustain my interest and, barring bad weather, guaranteed a result. So I should be more than vaguely interested in the current cricket world cup, but I’m not.
Taking place in Australia, the competition is going on forever. The reason for this is its convoluted nature. There are two groups of seven teams. The top four in each group will qualify for the Quarter Finals. Quite simple to understand, but quite ludicrous if you scratch slightly below the surface. There are seven ‘proper’ Test match countries, plus England. And there are six which we describe as ‘Mickey Mouse’ cricket nations including Bangla Desh, the UAE and, somewhat implausibly, Scotland. It’s rigged so that the top four teams in each group will qualify for the knock out stages and barring disasters, possibly involving England, the West Indies and/or Pakistan, all the small teams will exit the tournament. And even if they don’t, they have no chance of winning it.
Yesterday, Australia scored some 417 runs against Afghanistan – a new world cup record. That’s hardly surprising, is it? Afghanistan are not, and given the unstable nature of the country will not, be big players in the cricket elite. In short, they are there to make up the numbers, to make the tournament more lengthy and, presumably the main reason, for the organisers to make money. And to make it look like it’s a real world cup and not what it really is: the Commonwealth Cup.
Not that any of this really matters since no one, bar the seriously committed, is watching. Sky has exclusivity with all live cricket so the audience will be in thousands rather than millions at the best of times. And if you visit the pub or chat at work, no one is talking about it. It’s going on in the background whilst everyone else watches the football or the Six Nations.
England, as ever, have been terrible, but as long as they defeat Bangla Desh and Afghanistan, then they will still qualify. So why bother to have group stages at all?
As we have said before, the 2005 England Ashes team will be the last that transcends the sport, where the general public knew who the players were. Your average Joe or Josephine has no idea who most of the England team are, no matter how good they might be and the kids, especially outside the middle class heartlands of cricket, will have no heroes like the ones we had as kids.
If I have to choose between taking and leaving this world cup, I’ll leave it. It’s going on and on for no real purpose. Perhaps we will wake up for the latter stages but I am not holding my breath.
