While one cannot explain the absolutely dismal cricketing antics of Team India, what has caught my attention is the format of the tournament and the recent ban of YouTube by ICC.
The new format adopted in 2007 allows only 3 games to each side before they move on to the super eight, thereby not allowing even a single failure or as the experts like to say “an off day”. The disasters of this format were pretty clear when the world cup encountered it’s first upset in the India-Bangladesh encounter(that India managed to ruin it beyond repairs in their Srilanka encounter is a different story). At that point India had lost just one game but their prospects of moving on to super eight were already seriosuly dented. It was a situation that even if India beat Bermuda and Srilanka, it may still not make it to the super eight if they did not have a superior net run rate. Now this is absolutely absurd. Just one bad game in the preliminary round can basically throw a team out. Looking back to the previous world cups – Pakistan started terribly in the 1992 cup but the format allowed teams to come back into the tournament and they went on to win the cup. Ditto with Srilanka in the 2003 cup – started in the first gear but got to the semi finals.
The 2007 format was heavily based on the assumption that the top 8 teams WILL DEFINITELY beat the minnows and thus make it to the super 8. Now that ICC has seen the minnows are not so much minnows and it’s a one day game after all. No team is good or bad. They only have good and bad days. That’s a fine line that ICC missed. The fact that India and Pakistan did not help themselves by playing the way they did goes without saying. Hopefully the babus at ICC will realize the blunder and make amends for the next one.
Also I learnt this morning that ICC has asked the video giant YouTube to remove all the world cup clips from their website. Here again I think the Idiots Controlling Cricket have missed the boat. It seems like a short term vision. While trying to reason that this is in the interest of the broadcasters and the sponsors, they have failed to realize that this is probably the only way for people to watch the clips living in countries not broadcasting the world cup. Zimbabwe for instance is not broadcasting the world cup at all. Also its’ not that YouTube has live streaming of the world cup. ICC is making tons of money. They can afford a minor cut in their huge pockets, what they cannot afford is losing the true fans and the love they have for the game. They keep talking about promoting Cricket globally but they don’t seem to appreciate the powers of the Internet and what it can do to promote Cricket albeit ICC lets it. Here’s hoping sanity will prevail soon within the idiots. For the time being though the idiots are busy making money and destroying cricket while they are at it…