First of all a quick apology for not updating the site yesterday. Both Maxie and myself are incredibly busy at the moment and our day jobs have to take priority (boo!). Thanks to everyone for continuing the debate in the comments section. We really appreciate your contributions.
So much has happened in the last 48 hours. We had Chris Gayle smashing the first ever World Cup double century (and simultaneously sticking two fingers up to this critics), and now William Porterfield and others have reopened the debate on reducing the World Cup to ten teams in 2019.
The role of affiliate nations in world cricket is obviously a polarising one. We’d love to hear where you all stand. Obviously the idea of a ‘world cup’ is that it’s a global tournament and therefore it should include diverse participants. If the ICC are serious about growing the game, rather than focusing on the big three, then affiliate nations need exposure.
The flip side is that the ICC decided to reduce the number of teams in 2019 because many people criticised the number of one-sided games in 2011. There might an ulterior motive, of course, but that’s my recollection.
So what’s the answer? Have the ICC got this one horribly wrong, or would a shorter, more intense, higher quality (in theory) World Cup would work better? It will be interesting to gauge opinion.
James Morgan
Seeding, just like Wimbledon would make it a more even contest for the emerging nations and exciting for the spectators. We must not exclude the emerging nations if we want them to continue to play and develop our wonderful sport.
Quite right Peter. This, IMO, is more to do with money than anything else! Have a look at this article in today’s Telegraph. It is a cracker: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/cricket/cricket-world-cup/11435240/Minnows-are-crucial-to-cricket-World-Cup.html#comment-1876436487
Just tweeted the writer with my usual: 4 all cricket “outsiders” and he tweeted back: who’d want to be an “insider” with this lot!!!
On the last line of article there is a petition to sign to stop ICC from reducing the amount of teams that can play in the next tournament.
I think they should increase it to 16 teams, 4 groups of 4. So more teams but a shorter tournament. Leave the Champions Trophy as the competition only for the top 8 nations.
If they want to grow the sport, making the WC smaller isn’t going to help. And some of the associate nations have shown they are more than worth their place.
“the ICC decided to reduce the number of teams in 2019 because many people criticised the number of one-sided games in 2011. There might an ulterior motive”
There MIGHT be? Satire not dead I see.
The format was changed after 2007 because Ireland beat Pakistan and Bangladesh beat India. This is an indisputable fact. The format for 2011 and 2015 is designed to ensure India play the maximum possible games. The proposed format for 2019 is designed to ensure they play even more. The closest winning margins thus far in 2015 are 3 wickets and 62 runs. Neither match was between the top eight sides, i.e. the ones Dave Richardson thinks are guaranteed to provide the most competitive matches. The largest winning margins thus far are 150 runs and 8 wickets (with 226 balls remaining). Both of those matches were between top eight sides.
Ireland have beaten a top eight side in three consecutive World Cups, and have been rewarded with a “pathway” that actually makes it harder for them to qualify for the next one.
All this, and yet the Champions Trophy still exists. That is, the tournament designed specifically for the top eight sides, resurrected and pencilled in for 2017. To contract the World Cup when the CT is still being played is an utter disgrace, yet entirely of a piece with the recent power grab in world cricket and the shameful treatment (by the ECB, not just the BCCI) of touring sides such as New Zealand and South Africa.
I genuinely didn’t know I felt this passionately about the matter until January 2014. So thank you Clarke, Srinivasan and Edwards (and fourth musketeer Richardson), and sign this:
https://www.change.org/p/international-cricket-council-reverse-the-decision-to-reduce-the-2019-world-cup-to-ten-teams
I’ve already signed this petition – at least someone is starting a challenge to the ICC but whether it will gain ground is a whole other matter. Porterfield and the UAE have made their positions very clear in the last day or two.
I can’t help but think this is all too late, however, it is more than has happened in England, where, quite frankly, apart from a couple of blogs, nothing has taken place to challenge the ECB or media about the game in this country – no campaigning or anything – we are definitely on the outside!
Dead right.
Except, of course… The closest winning margins thus far in 2015 are 3 wickets and 62 runs.
Ireland/UAE have just provided the game of the tournament so far. The standards might not have been of the highest, but it was compelling nonetheless.
Ha! I was writing when Ireland were 90 odd for 4. Teach me to make foolish assumptions.
That’s why we like cricket.
petition signed, this great game is governed by a hopeless bunch of beurocrats, only interested in their own personal gain in my opinion, just like our very own political parties.
Sport is supposed to be for everybody, not just the fortunate few.
The most ludicrous aspect of this reduction is…….the next World Cup is reducing to 10 teams, but increasing the time taken to complete the tournament by 3 days,I believe.
My view is the powers that be are managing the decline of cricket. They are making no attempt to grow the game. They are just looking to keep it going as long as possible for the sole purpose of looting as much money as they can. That is the whole basis of the so called big 3. It doesnt matter if the cricket is lousy and one sided. All that matters is the right people make lots of dosh. Indias last 2 series here have ended 4-0 and 3-1 (if England had actually turned up for the Lords test it would have been another 4-0) England last Ashes was 5-0. Wow how exiting!!
South Africa are number 1 in the world and New Zealand are a very good side. But they don’t make much money because of TV rights. So they don’t get much of a series. It would be like the sprinter Usain Bolt turning up for the Olympic final and being told he was being replaced by a little Chinese guy because he gets millions of followers on Chinese TV..
Cricket is now about who is watching and not who is playing. It is not how good you are, but how many people watch you.
After going to the World Cup in the Caribbean, I now fully understand how the ICC can ruin a great global tournament – it was a disgraceful, soulless event and the ICC should never run a World Cup again, instead they should give it back to the host nation to run. I wanted cricket Caribbean style – sounds, flavour, atmosphere and fun. Instead empty soulless new built stadiums, no musical instruments allowed, no local food allowed (instead you got a box of cold KFC – seriously!). So whatever ICC decide when it comes to World Cups, you can be assured it looks after their cash along with dumb decisions without looking after fans and knowing what we want.
So how about a Rugby 7’s type format where there are plate, shield finals – this would give the lessor teams (inc England), who have been clobbered by the stronger nations in the group stages (there will always be an upset, which is great), a chance to play for something.
Bermuda v England in the Plate Final would be a blockbuster………………
If the ICC genuinely wants cricket to expand worldwide then there is no choice but to allow up to 16 teams to take part. It is as simple as that. Playing two matches per day will shorten the tournament.
I signed the change.org petition a couple of days ago when it had some 4000 signatures. It now has over 6000. Let us hope we can soon have the required 20,000 and more.
Ten teams will be a disaster for cricket as a global game. Giles Clarke is up to his neck in it of course – Tim Wigmore reported in the Independent that Clarke is “hell bent” on a ten team WC for 2019. I fear that associate nations will be offered more places at the T20 WC in return – as if it was an either/or situation.
Sachin Tendulkar (amongst many others) recently supported the associate case in an interview. The report of his interview on the ICC website omitted all those references. That’s the kind of Orwellian world inhabited by the ICC.
I think four-six teams would be about right, as long as none of them are England.
T20 is the correct format to expand the game, not this painful dragged out 50 over nonsense.
Make the T20 world cup 32 teams, and call it “the world cup”.
You can call the 50 over competition whatever you like, but the cricket world cup it ain’t.
Ireland have just beaten UAE by 2 wickets in the last over. Fantastic match.
Hopefully it will help end one misunderstanding about associate cricket – Ireland are not streets ahead of the others. The gap between associates and test-playing teams has narrowed but so has the gap between the top associates and the rest. It has also to be remembered that they are achieving what they are when denied experience against the test-playing teams (credit to Mark Nicholas for criticising Australia, Pakistan and others on air for not playing UAE when they’ve spent considerable time there playing each other).
Ireland play SA on Tuesday – really looking forward to it.
don’t ya just hate these one sided games!!!!!
George Dobell hinted at this in his podcast with Peter Miller and here it is, the plan to overhaul the game in England:
http://www.espncricinfo.com/ci/content/story/838533.html
wow, they really are relentless in their drive to completely destroy cricket in this country. Its as if they’re worrying that they’re not haemorrhaging fans fast enough through all their current imbecilic actions, they want to actively speed up the procedure.
Some of the most exciting games in this year’s World Cup have featured the so-called minnows. How can teams like Ireland, UAE, Scotland and Afghanistan continue to grow if they aren’t given the opportunity to play at the highest level?
It’s not the lop-sided games that detract from the tournament, it’s the meaningless games. England have been given two absolute shellackings yet can still qualify for the quarter finals. What on earth is the point?
If there were four pools of four, then every match is vital. The fact that all sides play 3 games also means that the pool stages can be all done within a couple of weeks, followed by quarters, semis and final.
The other thing they could do is decide the pools based on world rankings a year out from the finals – this would have the added benefit of making sure that those interminable ODI series actually have some kind of point.
Sport is at its most compelling when it means something – it meant something to Ireland and UAE today – can you really say that the games between England and Aus / NZ, based on the fact that England probably didn’t believe they could win but knew it had little effect on their progress.
Hamish, I’m afraid it’s the way of the world in sport. Look at the Champions league. They got rid of a knock out tournament because it meant the big clubs could go out in the first round. Instead they created a group stage, which guarantees 6 matches and lots of revenue.
They even had 2 group stages to just screw a little bit more out of the punters. The big clubs would prefer it went back to 2 group stages. I remember Burlisconi giving an interview in the 1980 s. It was a vision of where footbal was going. He said AC Milan should be in the European cup every year regardless of where they finish in the league.
You are right , sport is at its best when it means something. It is why I still have a fondness for the FA cup. Sudden death, if you lose your out. It’s very out of fashion these days. The clubs are driven by what makes money.,and that means rigging the system to create meaningless matches that can be lost.
The clubs are driven by what makes money, and that means rigging the system to create meaningless matches that can be lost.
But when the contest becomes boring and meaningless, as the world cup has become, the fans disappear in droves. So its completely counterproductive.
Same with the test championship, that would have brought context and interest and brought in a lot more fans. But they were too stupid to realise this and would prefer to simply play increasingly meaningless games against Australia and India over and over again.
I don’t disagree, but there is a difference between club and international tournaments.
There are plenty of money based decisions in rugby – the All Blacks travel half way round the world to play England ever November, but have never travelled to Samoa or Fiji to play an international. However, the World Cup, once every 4 years, is a straightforward competition, 4 pools, top 2 qualify.
For over a year since the draw was made, the ‘group of death’ which includes England, Wales and Australia, has generated massive interest and publicity, because one of those nations will go out at QF stage. It makes it more interesting, not less interesting.
India, backed up by her buddies in England and Australia, seem to think that they don’t need to expand, but the truth is that if cricket is not expanding into new markets, then it’s contracting.
If I was South Africa, New Zealand, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, WI I would seriously consider breaking away from the ICC and starting their own confederation. They could take in the likes of Ireland and other Associates as well.
Now it would not be easy , and in the short term they would take a financial hit. But eventually I believe the big 3 will get mighty fed up playing just themselves over and over again. Certainly the fans will get fed up with it.
The ICC will be left with A World Cup of just 3 teams. They can have a group each, and guarantee finishing top of their groups. I think they will be begging the other teams to come back.
“The other thing they could do is decide the pools based on world rankings a year out from the finals”.
This might work if the rankings were fair – they aren’t.
This is even more significant:
http://www.espncricinfo.com/ci-icc/content/story/838489.html
Will you give us your take on this please?
I can give you mine:
OK, my opinions:
1) 4-day Tests: As much as I love the grand sweep of Test cricket, there are large periods of each and every game that are agonisingly slow and tedious, where neither team seems to be under enough immediate pressure to make things happen quickly enough to keep me hooked. Limiting the game to 4 (or perhaps even 3) days would cut out a hell of a lot of dead overs, without turning the game into something it isn’t. 3-4 days is long enough for any sports match, imo.
2) 40-over ODIs: Same story. I find the middle 10 overs or so of each and every ODI I watch pretty dull, tbh (although not nearly as bad as the middle of a Test innings can be). Cutting the game to 40 overs would remove a lot of “nothing” overs.
3) EPL: absolutely essential to the future of the sport in this country. No idea why it’s taken the ECB (sorry, Cricket England and Wales now) so long to figure this out. T20 is the only format of the game that’s actually paying for itself right now, and our summer coincides with everyone’s winter, where there’s no domestic cricket going. Result: loads of world-class foreign players available for auction.
To sum up, I think the ECB are actually right on all 3 counts. (Never thought I’d ever be able to say that!…) They seem to have finally figured out that the pace of life in 2015 is not the same as it was in 1979 (when Tests were standardised at 5 days), and that the younger generation of cricket supporters (you know, the people who actually matter to the future of the game) are more likely to turn out to short games than long ones.
Thanks for your response.
You seem to have your finger on the pulse of ECB thinking! As far as test matches are concerned I seem to recall that the fifth day was added as a as a counter to rain delay. I could accept a four day test but certainly not a three day affair. It would not be the same game. It’s the ebb and flow that helps to make it what it is. It has permenant potential. It should be a test, not a harem scarem of sorts.
Agnew against ten team WC:
https://twitter.com/Aggerscricket/status/570551476776382466
Agnew’s thoughts more developed here:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/cricket/31656135
Good to see him on the side of the larger WC – but he’s still missing who is mostly to blame for the drive to shrink the tournament. It isn’t TV or even the ICC…..
Won’t bother to repeat the reasons adduced above that the only (ONLY!) sensible answer is 4 pools of 4 with top two from each pool then going through to semi-finals. Simple. Job done.
(And selection for 16 based on one-day league table for previous 12 months.)
Can’t wait for four day test matches and 40 over one day games.
It will free up an immense amount of time for me as I will stop following cricket altogether and spend more time with my family.
Absolute and total fuckers!
According to Sharda Ugra on cricinfo one of the proposals is a virtually done-deal:
“what of the 40-over World Cup? At the international level, that should be a shoo-in. The ECB’s discussion document has the words requiring its reps to “influence ICC” into changing the World Cup to a 40-over format. It won’t require much effort as the other two biggies – India and Australia – are on the ECB’s side anyway”.
in the theme of the 1970s movie – somebody called a cricket world cup and nobody came
Very Dry, Very Direct and Very True Ian.
Hear hear to your sentiments Re: This total load of nonsense.
When I read this in The Independent in the UK my first thought was that April 1st had come Five Weeks too early.
Total and utter &^£%%£%%!!!
Yes Ian!
I’d go further extend the World Cup to 20 teams, with four groups of five with two matches a day. Would still be over quicker than this tournament.
In an ideal world I’d make every team have to qualify, too. This would spell the end of the pointless bilateral ODI series we have nowadays and provide context to every game. I can’t see that ever happening in my lifetime though, sadly.
Scrap the Champions Trophy, for crying out loud! Weren’t they going to do that after the 2013 edition? Increase it to 16 teams and have only the top 5 automatically qualify for the WC with the rest needing to go through qualifiers. This allows Associate nations to get more practice vs the Test playing nations and this will prompt countries to actually schedule tours vs Ireland, Afghanistan, UAE, Scotland, etc…..
Why on earth should the top five qualify automatically? Can you name other global sporting tournaments where that happens?
Also, how would you define top five? ICC rankings? They are massively flawed. Place in previous WC? Kenya would have qualified in 2007 despite their form having collapsed after 2003.
What do I think of a 10-team World Cup? I think it is about time that the ICC took action to prevent itself from turning into the Indian Cricket Cash-in.
Major League Baseball has 30 teams in it and manages to have a “World Series” final once a year. To quote:
“Today, MLB is composed of thirty teams: Twenty-nine in the United States and one in Canada. Teams play 162 games each season. Five teams in each league advance to a four-round postseason tournament that culminates in the World Series, a best-of-seven championship series between the two league champions that dates to 1903.”
True, a ODI takes longer than a baseball game. But if the MLB can manage 30 teams, the ICC should be able to handle 12 or 16.
I actually don’t think there’s anything intrinsically wrong with having 10 teams in the world cup as opposed to 14. However there are two massive problems with the format for 2019:
1. Reducing the number of teams is fine, if the qualification process is fair. This will not be the case. All that the teams ranked immediately above (e.g.) Ireland have to do maximise their chances of qualification is refuse to schedule any games against them. Football has a 32 team world cup, but thats out of about 200 countries which have an international football team, with maybe the top 100 or so of those having a core of professional players- so as a proportion of football’s reach it’s arguably smaller than a 10 team cricket world cup. However, the big difference is that the qualification process in football is transparent and actually quite fair- two teams in the same continent have the same process to go through to qualify. In cricket there are an awful lot of essentially contextless one-off ODI series. Maybe, for the two years before the world cup these should be replaced by a more formalised qualification system, in which everyone gets a fair crack of the whip. It would bring in less revenue in the short term but if it helps some of the associates to grow it will good for cricket in the long run.
2. As others have pointed out, the main benefit of reducing the number of teams should be to make the tournament more condensed and less meandering- with every game meaning something. Yet the new format will actually take longer! The reason for this of course has nothing to do with making the world cup actually better, and everything to do with maximising the number of games India, Australia and England play regardless of how well they perform.
http://www.espncricinfo.com/ci-icc/content/story/838771.html
LOL if Colin thinks t20 is oging to be successful by making tests/odi shorter
One of the beautiful things about a World Cup is the minnow games. Ireland have already scored an upset (although not a major one) and the Bangers could beat Sri Lanka today. Pakistan could lose to anyone on their day too. The idea of a plate final is a very good one. the emerging nations need to be encouraged heavily, not abandoned.
Scotland Afghanistan this morning (and I was only following the ball by ball online) was enthralling.
Amazing innings by Shenwari, and the Afghans grab it at the death when Scotland miss a runout with four balls left, and numbers 10 and 11 batting….
Keep the minnows in, they will never grow into big fish if they don’t get a chance to play against better opposition. Two superb finishes in two days, both “minnow” matches, by far the best contests of the tournament.
I like the idea of a 16 team world cup 4 groups of four rather than this relentless nonsense of a month just to get through the group stages. This will allow a few countries (think of the likes of Netherlands, Kenya, Canada, Namibia) who perhaps have struggled to qualify for recent tournament a better opportunity to gain exposure, while at the same time nigh on nail on the ‘bigger countries’ to qualify for the latter stages.
Full nominations for Sports Journalist of the Year Award:
http://www.sportsjournalists.co.uk/awards-news/record-awards-entries-have-set-the-bar-high/
Associate games have been the most entertaining games in the WC so far. The least have been the ‘big’ games.
Get rid of the pointless bi-lateral series. Mean nothing
Bring in a qualification process if you want to reduce the WC length
I say keep the WC big but have 2 games per day to shorten it
keep 50 overs though personally, too much slap and tickle anyway around. Need to keep the game promoting real cricket skills and not just stand and deliver biffing
Hmmm…it’s all about “spin” They’re starting to spin as many plates on the end of a stick as they can, they’ll keep ’em up for as long as they can, but will be happy at the end of the day that they’ll have one or two plates still spinning!!
One little gobbet that was in Dobell’s article was interesting, and seems to have gone entirely unnoticed whilst said plates are spinning, is that we are soon to have “Cricket England and Wales” as the ECB is seen to be toxic!! Well, bugger me, who’d have thought that eh? I thought they were all supposed to be decent chaps, all from the right schools and families, and all with the good of cricket engrained in their souls, and how could they possibly, ever, consider doing anything inappropriate?
If it looks like a weasel, sqwarks like a weasel…it’s a feckin weasel! Calling it a fluffy Easter bunny changes nothing!!
I don’t think the the proposed ECB name change has gone unnoticed.. Just that everyone other than a ECB Hack knows that it’s still made up of the same employees, run by the same idiots and will still be a sack of crap.
ECB is toxic as is everyone associated with the ECB, their mantra, their pathways, their coaches at all levels (who have gobbled up the crap spouted remember!!). The only solution is a complete overhaul.. ie, sack them all, get a totally new team in to re-evaluate each and every person and get rid of anyone not decent and totally cricket oriented.
careful now. If you want to coach cricket in this country, you have to jump through the ecb hoops. That doesn’t mean you necessarily agree with them.
Would you prefer we just gave up on cricket altogether?
You’ve got to hand it to the ECB – all those years that people were complaining that the Pro40 domestic tournament didn’t mirror international cricket. And it turns out that it was the international game that was at fault. My goodness! What a bunch of idiots – I would like to say that I can’t see 4 day tests and 40 over ODIs becoming the norm, but sadly I can.
Meet the new boss… the same as the old boss… :(
Somewhat ironic that the name of the beast is GRAVES
The ten team WC is all about greed of course. The thing is, as Russell Degnan argues here, the ICC aren’t even very good at being greedy:
http://idlesummers.com/post.php?postid=1888
I don’t know if this was referred to here earlier but Michael Vaughan on Tuffers and Vaughns Cricket Show on Radio 5Live 2 nights or so ago was saying the bleeding obvious – not that GC or PD would care a stuff among others – but that reducing the amount of teams to 10 would ensure that this great game of ours would die out in 30 years or so, and that we should be expanding the game to the USA and even China where there is some genuine interest there I believe! – If Afghanistan can be shown to be a decent competitive side – then who knows what could happen. I think this is the link
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b05371tx
Dave Richardson’s latest pronouncements on the issue:
https://sports.yahoo.com/news/size-2019-world-cup-still-decided-icc-065358435–spt.html
Richardson isn’t doing himself any favours but he (and even less the ICC) aren’t the main villains. Richardson is like Joe McCarthy and the witch-hunts – a useful frontman and fall-guy but not where most of the serious poison is coming from. The full members and in particular the Big Three are the puppetmasters here.
Giles Clarke’s hand, as slippery as a dead eel, is omnipresent!
This is great:
http://captiongenerator.com/31613/Hitler-Reacts-to-CWC15-Associate-teams
Fantastic. Thanks Simon.
4 day Tests are the answer – would actually mean very few overs lost & increase the chances of full days’ cricket on every day avoiding the sad fag-end 5th days, 100 overs per day, play till all overs bowled irrespective of time, floodlights to help this out & also reduce fussy bad light calls, no deduction of overs between innings – ie guaranteed 400 overs vs probably not much than that now after deductions/ dropoffs etc.More definite for spectators (ie can safely buy advance tickets for all days) & frees up time in players calendars.
The biggest problem with the 50 over ODI game is the middle part where the game just slows down.
How about splitting it into two innings of 20 or 25 overs each? The difference from Tests being that you get a total of 10 wickets and action in the second innings begins where you left off in the first . To encourage scoring, the team with a first innings lead gets a bonus equivalent to that lead added to its total. There could also be a penalty for wickets lost. A “follow on” concept could be put in too.
For example,
Team A scores 130/4 in its first innings
Team B scores 122/1 in response
Team A has a lead of 8. As a result, they get 8 bonus runs added, but are docked 3 runs for losing 3 extra wickets.
The seconds innings for Team A resumes at 135/4
this format would be a lot more exciting in my opinion. It’ll also cut down on matches ending in a “no result”.