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The ICC Cricket World is now at the quarter final stage. And mostly it has been enjoyable with quite a few thrilling finishes plus outstanding batting and bowling performances.
The batting stars so far are AB de Villiers from South Africa, Kumar Sangakkara and Tillakaratne Dilshan from Sri Lanka, Brendon MacCullum from New Zealand, Brendan Taylor from Zimbabwe, Chris Gayle from the West Indies, Shikhar Dhawan and Virat Kohli from India and the Australian swashbuckler Glenn Maxwell – the Errol Flynn of cricket.
The outstanding bowlers have been Mitchell Starc from Australia and Trent Boult and Tim Southee from New Zealand.
I realise that it is easy to be wise after the event but the CWC could have been better organised. Here are my suggestions.
The final Test between Australia and India concluded in Sydney on 10 January this year. Then there was a meaningless Tri Nations one-day series between Australia, India and England.
The ICC CWC started on 14th February – 35 days after the Test series ended. The final will be played on 29th March, the tournament lasting 44 days.
Isn’t it too long for a cricket season to go on when the rugby league and AFL seasons start in early March and the daily newspapers give three to four times more coverage to NRL and AFL than to the all important CWC?
Instead of 14th February, the CWC could have commenced on Saturday the 24th January, the long weekend, with 26th January being Australia Day and a public holiday.
Also instead of lasting for 44 days with long breaks in between matches, the Final could have been held on Sunday the first of March, thus the tournament lasting for 35 days.
The opening India–Pakistan clash could have been held on the MCG where the crowd would have neared a world record 100,000.
Apart from Scotland and UAE, the lowly ranked countries – especially Bangladesh, Zimbabwe and Ireland – performed well. A 12-team CWC would work better in future.
Now to the colour clothing by different teams. The rationale behind using different colour clothing in one-day internationals was two-fold: for better visibility of the white ball for batsmen and for umpires, and to distinguish between rival teams.
The first purpose is satisfied.
But with England, India, Sri Lanka and Afghanistan donning dark blue uniforms and many countries wearing yellow to yellow-green attire, the second purpose is lost according to me.
What do you say, Roarers?