- Video
-
Club Roar
Captured a great grassroots sporting moment? We want to see it!Content Collections
The Roar Community
- Join
- Login
Another week of the ICC World Cup goes by, and another Associate nation gets hammered by a Test teams. But are the non-Test nations always the tournament’s whipping boys?
And why is the cricketing world seemingly so precious about them – what use to the future of the sport is it to protest that smaller nations can’t compete simply because they lose – often? Is that their apparent crime against cricket?
Remember when Zimbabwe lost often? Sri Lanka lost often? Yet two decades on, Sri Lanka was a one-day champion side. Ten years after their debut, Zimbabwe weren’t half bad either.
Or, as Peter Roebuck put it way back in November 2009 on CricInfo.com, are cricket fans so caught up in the wonders of preserving yesteryear that they can’t bear to see new names added to the statistics lists of Wisden, etc?
“Turn it from an imperial relic into a world game”, Roebuck wrote.
“Take the gift of the game to every possible nook and cranny of a shrinking world…That is the way to breathe life into the game.”
However, “cricket is altogether too precious about Test cricket”, added Roebuck.
“In every other sport it is possible for strong and weak to meet without the game getting into a palaver about it. Brazil can play the Isle of Man in football and it’s still called a fair-dinkum international. If Kaka scores 10 goals, all and sundry shrug and smile and forget about it. When the same things happen in cricket, steam comes out of the ears of statisticians and historians.”
It’s that kind of attitude, in the 21st century, that makes cricketing anoraks (and probably the odd one paid member of the ICC) sound like something bordering on a madcap Monty Python sketch.
Roebuck is right. Cricket has surely gone beyond the colonial-era perception of leisurely whack for the accountants and lawyers of the day – with club captains that had “Doctor” or “Professor” attached to their entry in the scorebook.
Perhaps football lovers even looked down on cricketers at times, assuming that the leaders of the game were dull, boring and probably members of the “Upper Class Twit” judging panel.
Of course, in those bygone days, the rabble-set of the population were equally kept away from England’s green cricketing fields. Imagine the Three Lions taking on Kenya in the 1800s in a three-day match? The resulting mis-match in skill level may have been likened to an examination of “village idiots in society”, to borrow another classic John Cleese moment.
In the words of Python character Arthur Figgis: “there is this very real need in society for someone whom almost anyone can look down on and ridicule.”
Has this really been the type of role fulfilled by teams such as Kenya, Canada and so on for the past five decades?
Checking on the Zimbabwe-Canada and Holland-West Indies games during Monday on CricInfo.com, I noticed that a few fans were really laying into the Canadians in particular.
One posted a comment saying that while he was sorry for Ireland and the Dutch potentially missing out in 2015, the Canucks were an “utter joke” because of their batting collapse.
Yet, Canada had cut down the Zimbabwean top order just as easily. Another described the match, which Zimbabwe went on to win comfortably, as about as exciting as a dead wasp in a jar of jam.
It seems that when wickets tumble on the scorecard belonging to an Associate team, it’s an “joke”. Yet, when Warnie sliced through half a batting line-up in an Ashes Test it’s thrilling.
So, the Associates are viewed as guilty of playing in matches where someone’s batting or bowling average might just eclipse Lord Kenneth Reginald-Barnstoneworth Wheelbarrow Hoppinton of Blustershire (or something similar).
Does it really matter now whether a West Indian takes a hat-trick against Holland and everyone goes “gasp – how can we let that happen”. Hat-tricks happen between top-tier Test teams too, you know.
It’s a bit like the other Roar story earlier this week – whether the great Don Bradman is or isn’t better than Sachin Tendulkar isn’t the point. The point is that you have an amazing sport that has enough history to it – and its tapestry is constantly being added to, yes, even by the likes of Canada and Kenya – to allow fans to engage in such wonderful banter.
It’s not about how many strands Dr W.G. Grace had in his badger-losing beard and why no-one in the current Irish team comes close to that thread-count. It’s about the fact that they all get to share in the great traditions surrounding cricket. And if that’s not cricket, then it’s just not cricket.
Let’s think about this in numbers terms, though. What are the biggest victory margins in the history of the World Cup – and do they always involve Associate countries? For the sake of statistical counting, I’ve gone with the basic assumption that five wickets in an innings is equal to a century batting, hence a 10-wicket win is worth the same as a 200-run victory.
Surprise – the biggest margins haven’t always involved the Associates. Sri Lanka and East Africa (predominantly made up of Kenyans) entered as Associates in 1975, and neither were responsible for the heaviest defeat of the competition – that was India losing to England on the opening day of the competition. Sri Lanka came within 52 runs of beating Australia that year, too.
Four years on, it was the West Indies inflicting a nine-wicket defeat on India to open the Cup, although admittedly the Sri Lankans lost by the same margin to the Kiwis. In other games in the 1979 tournament, West Indies fairly thrashed England in the final, while Pakistan crashed through Australia in the first round.
Where were the Associates? Canada lost twice by eight wickets, to Pakistan and England, and by seven to Australia. Still not the greatest margins of the summer, though. Indeed, as a whole, the 1979 World Cup contained more closer results than the previous edition.
Zimbabwe did, however, contribute to the blow-out factor at their first attempt in 1983, but Australia, India and Pakistan were also all on the receiving end at various times, as was new Test nation Sri Lanka.
It was a real mixed bag in India/Pakistan in 1987, but again, at least half of the over-100-run or more than seven-wicket wins belonged to Test nations playing against each other, not the Associate-level entry, Zimbabwe. That moderate trend continued in Australia/New Zealand in 1992 as well. The five biggest margins again did not feature Zimbabwe – Pakistan were humiliated by 10 wickets by the Windies, if anyone cares to remember… Overall, victories were marginally larger in 1996 with the addition of three Associates – UAE, Kenya and Holland.
1999 in England reversed that, with generally closer matches, despite Scotland, Kenya and Bangladesh providing the Associate entries. Then came the 2003 behemoth of a tournament, and up went those victory margins again… Australia crushed Namibia by 256 runs – then the worst defeat in World Cup history. India and Pakistan joined in the party, by 181 and 171 runs respectively.
The 2007 farce in the West Indies arguably showed up why adding six Associates simply does not work yet. Margins of more than 200 runs were routine against non-Test opposition, with the second-tier nations having their lowest point in statistical terms, despite Ireland making the second round, which was obviously a fantastic way to buck the trend. As for 2011, maybe it’s too early to tell.
Now back momentarily, for the final word – from the Pythons. Of course, late in that same episode that featured the “village idiots”, there was mock footage of a cricket Test, presumably dating from the mid-1970s, which showed an alternate reality wherein Iceland had full international status. So much so that they were into the second day of a Lord’s Test against England.
Cleese again (as a commentator): “So far today we’ve had five hours batting from England and already they’re nought for nought…England have played extremely well for nothing, not a sausage, in reply to Iceland’s first innings total of 722 for 2 declared, scored yesterday disappointingly fast in only twenty-one overs with lots of wild slogging and boundaries and all sorts of rubbishy things. But the main thing is that England have made an absolutely outstanding start so far.”
Maybe there’s hope for the Associates yet – and they’re not guilty either, m’lud.
BIGGEST ICC WORLD CUP VICTORY MARGINS 1975-2011 (to February 28 – source: www.cricinfo.com)
2007: India def Bermuda by 257 runs
2003: Australia def Namibia by 256 runs
2007: Sri Lanka def Bermuda by 243 runs
2007: Australia def Holland by 229 runs
2007: South Africa def Holland by 221 runs
2007: Australia def New Zealand by 215 runs
2011: West Indies def Holland by 215 runs
2011: Sri Lanka def Canada by 210 runs
2011: Pakistan def Kenya by 205
2007: Australia def Scotland by 203 runs
1975: England def India by 202 runs
1975: India def East Africa by 10 wickets
1983: West Indies def Zimbabwe by 10 wickets
1992: West Indies def Pakistan by 10 wickets
2003: South Africa def Kenya by 10 wickets
2003: Sri Lanka def Bangladesh by 10 wickets
2003: South Africa def Bangladesh by 10 wickets
2011: New Zealand def Kenya by 10 wickets
2007: Sri Lanka def Bangladesh by 198 runs
1975: England def East Africa by 196 runs
1975: Pakistan def Sri Lanka by 192 runs
1987: West Indies def Sri Lanka by 191 runs
2003: India def Sri Lanka by 183 runs
1975: New Zealand def East Africa by 181 runs
2003: India def Namibia by 181 runs
1975: West Indies def Sri Lanka by 9 wickets
1979: New Zealand def Sri Lanka by 9 wickets
1983: England def Sri Lanka by 9 wickets
1987: India def New Zealand by 9 wickets
1992: South Africa def Australia by 9 wickets
1996: Pakistan def UAE by 9 wickets
1999: England def Kenya by 9 wickets
2003: Sri Lanka def Canada by 9 wickets
2007: New Zealand def Bangladesh by 9 wickets
2007: Australia def Ireland by 9 wickets
Build your own fantasy cricket team and put it to the test with Draftstars daily fantasy competitions. Pick your match, pick your team and watch the points roll in to take out cash prizes on each match. What are you really gambling with? Set a deposit limit.