Opinion

The New World Order?

Global game, you say? The ICC’s everything-for-profit approach is killing the game off for cricket’s minnows.

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The New World Order?
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The kindest thing that can be said about the ICC Cricket World Cup 2015 as it meanders into its second week is that there have been a few bright moments to relieve the dreariness of the early group stage encounters. The brightest moment came when 11th ranked Ireland, who were set a winning target of 305, cantered past the West Indies in style, with more than four overs to spare.

One interesting assertion that pops up now and then in the mostly inane television commentary is that it does not matter who loses to whom at this stage of the World Cup. The reference, of course, is to the top eight ODI teams, which are also the top eight Test teams in the official rankings. The problem is that this knowing assertion—which is really an admission that a majority of the 42 matches played over 30 days, from February 14 to March 15, are meaningless from a sporting standpoint—is true.

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The scheduling of the matches among the teams in the group stage reflects this hollowness: for Australia, India and South Africa, for instance, there’s an awkward six-day gap between their first and second matches. Why? Because this is a shadow play that must be stretched out over as long a period as can be managed, for a collateral purpose that makes little sporting sense. The real World Cup will be staged over the following 14 days. I exaggerate, but only a little, and only to make a larger point.

There is a substantial literature on how the World Cup has evolved over four decades into the Great Game that every cricket-playing nation wants to play more than anything else. “Test cricket is the gold standard” amongst the three formats, Rahul Dravid observed in his 2011 Bradman Oration, but “the 50-over game is the one that has kept cricket’s revenues alive for more than three decades now.” This apart, most cricketers would agree that the one-day game has had an overall positive impact on how Tests are played now. It is true that too many odis are played “without context” (as they say in cricket circles) and the 50-over format appears at times to have lost its way. But somehow the four-yearly World Cup has become the platinum standard for the game, so much so that even a world-beating Test cricketer like Sachin Tendulkar has no hesitation in proclaiming the 2011 Cup triumph to be “the highest point of my career”.  

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That the ICC World Cup has become increasingly orien­ted towards maximising TV revenues to the detriment of the game and that this orientation is determined and zea­lously protected by what the cricket historian and wri­ter Gideon Haigh calls “the new world order” is well recognised. As he notes, this new world order emerged from “the root-and-branch restructure of the ICC plotted by the BCCI in cahoots with the ECB (the England and Wales Cricket Board) and Cricket Australia, and revealed by this ‘big three’ to the full membership in January 2014”. Since “the Cup’s commercial fortunes are now entwined with their Asian followings”, the structuring of the World Cup, its format, duration and number of participants must subserve the interests of the iniquitous new world order, which has ordained that only 10 teams shall participate in the 2019 and 2023 editions.

The arbitrary reduction is aimed at the strongest among the so-called minnows, the 38 associate members and, trailing a long way behind them, the 57 affiliate members. To be fair, the ICC has invested quite a lot over the years in the spread and development of cricket in many of these countries. Before the new world order kicked in, it even had a strategic plan, covering the period 2011-2015, for “a bigger, better global game”. But that, as they say, is history.

The strategy of globalising the game is in controlled ret­reat. Gideon offers the insight that in the new cricket world order, “the twin objectives of the Cup—spreading cricket to new frontiers, bankrolling the existing order—are subtly in tens­ion. At a time when most sports are thinking more globally, cricket is scaling its ambitions back for profit’s sake”.

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The stronger minnows have caused trouble enough for the big fish in past World Cups, by pulling off upsets: Sri Lanka, now one of the top four teams, did that in 1979, Zimbabwe in 1983 and 1992, Kenya in 1996 and 2003, Bangladesh in 1999 and 2007, and Ireland in 2007 and 2011. The unthinkable happened when Bangladesh and Ireland eliminated India and Pakistan, respectively, from the Super-8s of the 2007 World Cup, resulting in huge losses in television viewership and revenues.

Remember that in the 2007 World Cup held in the West Indies, 16 teams comp­eted and they were drawn in four groups. Two teams from each group went thro­ugh to the Super-8 round where giant- killers Bangladesh and Ireland were duly eliminated. So lessons were learnt about how to fix the Great Game to avert such intolerably subversive results.

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The solution arrived at for the 2011 and 2015 World Cups was ingenious: 14 teams would play in the group stage; they would be drawn in two groups, Pool A and Pool B, of seven teams each; and four teams from each group would go thr­ough to the quarter-finals. The calculation was that a minnow might stage one big upset in a group, but not two or three. (For all this strategising, Ireland, the strongest contender among the associates and no minnow, has a very good chance of winning two more matches in Pool B and going through to the quarter-finals. If it succeeds, a big fish, possibly but not necessarily the West Indies, will be a casualty.)

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The contrast with the structure and format of the FIFA World Cup, which was settled in 1998, is striking. FIFA has been maligned in the western press and certainly has its share of weaknesses and vices. But the way it has gone about making the World Cup open, inclusive and exciting is commendable. My wife and I were at the two semi-finals and final of FIFA World Cup 2014 in Brazil and before that had watched many of the games on TV. It quickly became clear that this is how a global sporting championship should be structured and conducted.

The football World Cup was conducted in 12 cities across Brazil between June 12 and July 13, 2014. Thirty-two teams, which had come through qualification matches played between June 2011 and November 2013, participated in the final championships. For the group stage, which was conducted between June 12-26, the 32 teams were drawn in eight groups. Each team in a group played three matches. Spain, the title-holder, was eliminated after the first two games. Nor did England and Italy, two former World Cup winners, make it to the Round of 16. There was disappointment, which I shared, but nobody complained and the tournament moved on. The group stage was highly entertaining, producing a World Cup high of 136 goals. The knockout stage began on June 28 and ended on July 13 with a stirring finale at the Maracana.

There is, of course, no comparison between the gigantic worldwide interest generated by a FIFA World Cup and the large but geographically limited audience an ICC Cricket World Cup attracts. But the intelligent and progressive way FIFA organises a World Cup—making it an open and genuinely sporting event in which anyone can advance and top teams can crash out at any stage—contrasts with the ICC’s TV-ratings-and-revenue-obsessed, conflicted, and unimaginative programming.

A sound and inclusive World Cup structure for “a bigger, better global game” in 2019 and 2023 could accommodate 16 teams, drawn in four groups of four teams each. The championship could quickly move on from there to the quarter-finals without an intermediate second stage, which the World Cup had in 2003 and 2007. A quick calculation shows that such a format would feature 31 games and cut down the duration of the World Cup by 40 per cent. Why not go for it?

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(N. Ram is chairman and publisher of The Hindu group of publications. He’s played first class cricket as a wicket-keeper batsman for Madras state.)

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