World Cup format is damaging T20 cricket

Source: Herald Sun

One of the biggest criticisms of Twenty20 cricket is that it is essentially meaningless, a hit-and-giggle game without the meaning attached to one-day internationals and especially Test cricket. With this criticism in mind, the International Cricket Council (ICC) should view the Twenty20 World Cup as an opportunity to debunk this idea by providing three weeks of exciting cricket packed full of important matches.  But unfortunately what we have got so far in this tournament has been a week of mis-matches with predictable results.
 The obvious problem here being the format and scheduling of the tournament.

Consider the opening matches in each of the groups: Sri Lanka opened the tournament against Zimbabwe, Group B started with Australia playing Ireland, India faced off against Afghanistan in Group A, while New Zealand and Bangladesh kicked off Group D. Not surprisingly, the matches were rather lop-sided, which meant the winners were virtually guaranteed a spot in the Super Eight stage. Imagine instead, if each of the groups began with a match between the two higher ranked teams. Sri Lanka vs. South Africa, Australia vs. West Indies, India vs. England, New Zealand vs. Pakistan. The tournament would start with a bang and the resulting group matches would have had meaning, as the loser of the opening match would be in danger of missing out on the Super Eight stage.

The next problem with the tournament’s structure occurred once the group stage was under way. One feature of the tropics is that it rains, and rains heavily, and that played havoc with a number of matches. Somewhat fortuitously for South Africa and Sri Lanka, they had already qualified for the Super Eights before rain ruined their match, but the ICC officials insistence that they play any form of match, even be it a 14-over game did nothing to improve the standing of Twenty20 cricket as a serious form of the game. It would have been better to have called off the match all together, or to have had some sort of contingency in place where the game could be scheduled for a different time.

Ireland was much less fortunate with the weather. After losing to Australia, the Irish faced a must-win clash against the West Indies to qualify for the Super Eights. The Sri Lankan weather though, put paid to any hopes of that occurring. The washout of the game meant that Ireland went out of the tournament and the Windies progressed despite neither of them winning a game. Ireland would feel cheated of a potential Super Eight spot while the West Indies are unlikely to be full of confidence for the next stage. Hardly a ringing endorsement for the format of the tournament.

A possible solution could be to remove the initial group phase of the tournament, and have a round-robin stage with two groups of six before the semi-final stage. Each team would still play the same number of matches before the semis as the do now (five), and the top teams would face each other in more matches. It would also give the weaker teams more opportunities to cause an upset and alter the shape of the tournament. It would most importantly mean that teams are less likely to be victims of circumstances outside of their control. Seems like a pretty simple solution doesn't it?

Now if only the ICC were regular readers of this blog…