For glorious World Cup future, we need to boot out some teams

The World Cup. What do those words mean to you? To me they mean one thing: the best of the best, competing for the ultimate prize. And they mean another thing: excellence.

Or to put it another way: not non-excellence. The World Cup, as everyone knows, must be a celebration of the elite, a congregation of the greatest and most brilliant players of a generation, pitting their supreme skills against each other in the apex of cricketing endeavour.

Bearing this in mind I am sure that you, like myself, are incredibly believed that the next World Cup will be pruned to a ten-team competition, replacing the unwieldy monstrosity we have before us currently.

What could be more unedifying than the spectacle of these hapless amateurs hacking wildly away with bats they only learnt how to hold yesterday, stumbling up to the crease to flop down deliveries so inept they might as well be accompanied by a sachet of ketchup.

It’s as gross a sight for the cricketing aesthete as the infamous “Steph Scully, super-bat” incident on Neighbours.

Did you see the Afghanistan-Scotland game this week? It was positively unnatural. Oh yes, it had a close finish and tension and excitement and all that garbagey nonsense that satisfies the short of attention span and the sparse of refinement.

Those artificial additives that conspire to conceal the absence of true cricketing skill. But to those who appreciate the grand dame Cricket as she was always meant to be played, the sight of these nations, one more versed in haggis-hurling than cricket, the other in goat-carcass polo, flailing pathetically at each other like two dachsunds on their hind legs trying to strangle each other with glow-sticks, was not only horrifically undignified, but deeply wounding to the soul.

The match between the ‘UAE’ (not a real country) and ‘Ireland’ (not sure that this is one either) was, if anything, even worse. Again, a close finish to provide the sugar rush that our hyperactive Legend of Zelda-reared younger generation seem to prefer to actual nourishing art.

And again a complete absence of the true, deep fulfilment that can only come from watching two mighty cricketing powers in a clash of finely-honed skills, meticulously-constructed strategies, and enthusiastically-earned salaries.

There they stood, the Dunces of Dubai and the Calamities of Cork, playing out their sad little pantomime of cricket, aping the cuts and drives and outswingers and yorkers of proper cricketers, but still unable to hide the one pertinent and devastating fact that they weren’t as good as players from other countries and had no right to be running about enjoying themselves in front of paying customers who deserved a professional night’s entertainment.

Hopefully, thanks to the ICC’s foresight and wisdom, this will be the last time we’ll have to suffer this eyesore. The last time we’ll have to endure the juvenile glee of the part-time pillocks and their puerile play-acting.

The last time we’ll have to roll our eyes at the indecorous and quite incorrect joy of the Afghan team celebrating a meaningless victory, having been grossly misinformed as to the validity of Scotland’s existence on a cricketing stage, let alone their own, and embarrassing themselves and us through their recklessly ignorant happiness.

The last time we’ll fear the possibility of a team being as vulgar as the poorly-raised Irish in humiliating a proper cricket team via what I can only assume was some sort of underhand trickery.

Finally, in 2019, we will experience the pure, unadulterated, clinical pleasure of a tournament made up of real cricketing countries: the ones who play Test cricket and know who Bill Ponsford was.

Obviously the format will not be perfect: after all, ten teams is rather a lot. Look at the Test-playing nations now: Zimbabwe and Bangladesh aren’t really proper teams either. They only really came along in the last 30 years or so. There’s no genuine history to these fellows. Ideally, by 2023 they’ll be out too.

And of course with any luck the West Indies will be gone by then as well, thus ridding the grand old tournament of the ignominious smear of the erratic. It is to be hoped the ICC will stop coddling these enigmatic jesters and bar them from international competition until they learn to be a bit more even in their performances. And the same goes for Pakistan, if we’re honest: they’ve been getting away with their ludicrous form yo-yo for decades now – the free ride must stop soon.

This leaves a solid core of good, strong, consistent and committed countries to fight out future World Cups. Or a relatively solid core, anyway.

New Zealand should probably be phased out at some point: their capacity to draw crowds and television audiences large enough to contribute their fair share to the revenue of the game is nowhere near sufficient to justify their indefinite inclusion.

And really, South Africa needs to go with them – their commitment as a nation to the game of cricket is highly suspect, and their failure to thus far even make the final of any World Cup strongly suggests they don’t even really try even when they’re allowed to compete. There is little profit to be gained from keeping them around.

So that leaves a truly elite tournament dedicated to true excellence and the exhibition of the best cricket has to offer. Four teams, passionate, committed and blessed with sublime talent, delighting the world with their exploits.

Well, three teams, anyway. Sri Lanka is scarcely a necessary component of this showpiece event, is it? A small and insignificant country, it can be jettisoned without any great inconvenience to anyone, and it would save on airfares at future World Cups.

Moreover their players’ names are difficult to pronounce and cause undue embarrassment to many of our finest commentators.

Three teams, then. The three truly important teams, playing off for the title of World’s Best and showcasing our great game to a world hungry for top-echelon athletic achievement.

I mean obviously there’s no need for England to be involved. They don’t play one-day cricket very well anyway, and never seem to enjoy themselves at the World Cup. And as far as I can tell the English prefer soccer, which leaves a rather bad taste in the mouth. Soccer has its own World Cup after all, and the English can – if they like – go and win that.

So we are left with the cream that naturally rises to the top. The aforementioned best of the best. Cricket par excellence. The greatest cricketing nations on earth, all two of them. Australia, and India, in a month-long carnival of bat-and-ball bacchanalia.

First a twenty-match round robin, followed by four quarter-finals, two semi-finals and the final. Nothing but superb cricket, played by superb cricketers, in front of huge crowds, attracting massive TV rights deals, over, and over, and over, and over, forever and ever, unto eternity.

Such a bright, shining vision. Thank god the ICC is already working on it.