First/Group Round - Group A - Bangladesh, Netherlands, Ireland, Oman

[Black_Warrior]

The answer to every "why" question with regard to the formats of ICC tournaments is the same - to reduce the chance of a top test team getting eliminated. That's the entire purpose of designing the format of every tournament they host. The last two cricket world cups had probably the worst format of any international sporting event I've ever seen, and while this t20 format is a bit better, since the results of individual games in the group phase actually matter and it's not the whole tournament decided in 7 knockout games after a month of wasting time, it's still not any good.

A proper format would be something like four groups of four with the top two from each group going into a knockout stage, simple as that.

The proper format for a longer tournament with less potential for upsets like the 50 over world cup would be something like three groups of four going into a super six or three groups of five going into a super six. Since I can certainly buy the argument that 6 associates is too many for a 50 over tournament. But that would mean that, like in 2007, test nations could be eliminated if they lost games of cricket to other teams. And we can't have that.

This.

Absolutely. This is the double edged sword for an Associate nation.

If you play well and knock out a bigger team, you end up wrecking the tournament for ICC and its sponsors.

So next time, they will design a system to prevent that from happening.

If you play poorly, they will say 'see we knew you were not good enough, that's why you don't belong with us'

Bangladesh beating India in the 2007 WC pretty much ruined it for everyone.

 

[Pratters]

Less associates in main tournament as if there are more of them, the match which is a 'product' as they put it now, suffers as there are more strong v weak teams. That's the reason there are less teams for the next 50 over world cup as well. Jerks of the highest order.

 

[FaaipDeOiad]

Bangladesh beating India in the 2007 WC pretty much ruined it for everyone.

Yeah, though in a sport with a better governing body I don't think that would matter as much. I guess it's not completely fair to blame the ICC since their hands are tied to a degree by the lopsided monetary situation in cricket, but India lost two out of three games in that World Cup to get eliminated. They didn't just slip up against Bangladesh, they were well beaten by Sri Lanka as well. In any other sport, if a top team was eliminated because they lost most of their group stage games at a World Cup, it would be notable as a bad performance by that team, not a reason to change the entire format to ensure that team couldn't be eliminated again in a similar way. I mean, in three of the last four soccer world cups the reigning champion has been eliminated in the group stage (France in 2002, Italy in 2010 and Spain in 2014). FIFA does have the luxury of not relying to an significant degree on just those countries for revenue, but at a certain point as a fan of the sport you have to expect some sort of backbone. The host nation of the 2015 Rugby World Cup was knocked out in the group stage as well, and again, not likely to change the format in 2019 to ensure that doesn't happen.

It really is unfortunate.

Ultimately the goal for a tournament format should just be to ensure as many teams participate as possible without significantly reducing the quality of the average game played, and to ensure each game is as meaningful as possible in terms of who wins the tournament, without reducing the length of the tournament too much, ie not just a straight knockout competition from the start. Both of those considerations are balancing acts and there's a range of ways to do it, but the ICC doesn't really try for either.

 

[Black_Warrior]

Yepp couldn't have said it better myself. The problem with what you're saying though is it requires a considerable degree of leadership, strategic thinking and policies. You're absolutely right that when bigger European teams like Spain or France or even a popular team like Brazil gets knocked out (in 2010), it doesn't make it automatically a loss making tournament.

This is happening because cricket is not expanding. There are a lot of people, which includes journalists, analysts, former players including Tendulkar who have realized that cricket needs to expand. I have been banging my head about this on this forum for so long but I have come to a certain understanding.

Most people on here who love the game with passion, will look at themselves, and their 3 friends around them and conclude that 'hey cricket is in great health, I love it, my mates I drink with love it, why do we have to change anything' I think that's exactly how ICC member boards are looking at it. Hey every time we have a major one day game (not even the World Cup) in India, it's packed. Every time we have an England-Australia test match it's packed. Who says cricket needs to change or get better?

For too long cricket's stakeholders which includes fans have had this level of complacence. But all these problems we are having about the Associate nations are all connected.

And once again it's between a rock and a hard place. In order to expand markets, we have to invest in these Associate teams, get them to play more and more international cricket and slowly we will start to have a sustainable market outside of the major markets. But if we do that, and have these teams play more in tournaments like World Cups and they end up knocking out the bigger teams, then that's a major major loss right now.

So short term vs long term here and history has shown that for most part, we lack a long term vision, and tend to opt for the easier, short term success.

But one of the signs is right in front of us. Bangladesh is the country that got the most support in the last 15 years, and yes they have been abysmal and shocking for most part and prompted us to question our thinking, but I think they can be an extremely important commercial player in the near future. With their LO form, and the enormous market that they have, and an economy looking upwards, cricket can possibly look at a significant source of revenue from there in the next 4-5 years.

 

[FaaipDeOiad]

Yeah, selective investment in associate cricket is the way to go, but symbolic inclusion in international tournaments is also huge. That's where the ICC are really missing expansion opportunities I think, we've seen with soccer over the last few decades that the local significance of the sport in non-traditional places has increased a lot with exposure to the World Cup. Hosting it in the USA, expanding the tournament to 32 teams etc have helped the growth of the sport tremendously. It's obviously not as big in the USA as their local sports or in Australia as cricket/AFL but it's growing, and I think international competition is as big in that as local, grassroots stuff. Of course its not exactly like soccer because some of these associate teams are mostly made up of expats etc, but it's still something.

I also think t20 is the perfect place to get massive numbers of associate teams involved too. With the range of franchise leagues around the world there's the chance for some good players from associate teams to get picked up by a franchise and build a career for themselves out of a good world cup performance, and the chance of upsets is much higher. Really missing an opportunity pushing all the associate teams to a qualifying tournament instead of giving Afghanistan or Oman the opportunity to beat a test nation.

 

[Black_Warrior]

A World T20 even in USA or Canada would be a great start. Of course the main market would be the expat South Asian community but it will help attract some local businesses plus attract some level of attention from the larger population as well.

 

[turnstyle]

I guess the difference between rugby, football and cricket world cups is India. There's no single country in rugby or football that has such a detrimental effect on a tournament with an early exit. If the All Blacks were to be eliminated from the RWC in the first round there's enough interested in SA or Australia to keep it 'successful'. It's not good, but it's also not going to change in the short term so it's going to be 10 teams and 9 guaranteed fixtures for India. From listening to the other Associate skippers in the pressers, whilst they're not overly happy with it, they're mainly pissed off about the lack of fixtures and bilateral series between the events. It's a more than fair point.

Been really interesting listening to Ed Joyce and Colin Smith on Sky. They think it's not necessarily a money issue. They've been a real good insight into the Associates. I hope they use Ed more often.

 

[FaaipDeOiad]

Is India being eliminated really enough on its own to make a World Cup a financial failure? 2007 had a lot of other problems beyond just India and Pakistan playing poorly, like crappy attendance, facilities, sponsor issues etc. I don't think the 2015 World Cup would have been a financial failure just because India got eliminated early, for example.

Of course, it's not totally comparable for a range of reasons, but I think that might be overstating India's power a little bit, they're not the only country in world cricket that brings in money. It was the BCCI after all who came out after the 2007 world cup and said the format sucked and they would make sure it got changed for 2011 to avoid a possible early India exit, it wasn't the ICC. I think it's more that India has a huge amount of power for broader financial reasons (tv rights deals that include the World Cup etc) than that India's success or failure in a tournament determines the financial outcomes of that particular tournament. So when the BCCI says something like that the ICC takes it seriously, unlike in soccer where if the Spanish FA came out and said the World Cup format was bad because Spain got a hard group in 2014 as reigning champions and got eliminated, FIFA would just laugh at them.

 

[GIMH]

How are Omar doing?

 

[Contra]

I don't support the 2011 or 2015 format either, but that doesn't make the 2007 format better in comparison. The issue with the 4 groups of 4 is that it does not provide enough games to make an accurate judgement to determine which team is better. Now whether that team happens to be India, Pak or whoever else doesn't really matter.

My personal suggestion would be to simply get rid of the "Quarter final" and just make it 2 groups of 7 with the top two moving right into the semis. That would make each game that much more critical because you would get some test nations eliminated in the group stage, making games virtual quarter finals almost by default as the group stages come to a close. Because each team would get 6 games to make a case for themselves rather than 2, which was the case in 2007.

 

[FaaipDeOiad]

2007 wasn't ideal either, not really a fan of an eight team league for the second stage, just too long.

But on the subject of whether or not India was the issue, in 2003, Pakistan, England, South Africa and the West Indies were all eliminated in the group stage and it wasn't deemed a huge deal, even though South Africa were the hosts and it was half the major test teams that were missing from the super six stage. Two groups of 7 would make it equally hard to recover from a bad start as in 2007 anyway, and would mean tons of games were dead rubbers between two sides that couldn't possibly qualify. You'd probably need to win 4 or 5 of your 6 games to make the semis, so a team like India and Pakistan in 2007 would still basically be out after losing to Bangaldesh/Ireland, and then they'd just be playing three extra games for no reason.

I'm fine with the idea that three games isn't a lot, and in 99 and 03 the group stage was 5-6 games long, though eliminating underperforming teams after three games does give the opportunity to dramatically shorten the tournament, which is why the soccer world cup manages to be like half the length of the cricket one despite having double the number of teams. I'd like to see groups of five or something, so teams get to play four games and have to win around 3 of them on average to qualify for a super six type league. But whatever format you use, one specifically designed to prevent upsets where lesser teams knock out major teams is a bad one.

 

[mr_mister]

I think the '92, '99 and '07 WC had good systems in place, despite all being kinda different to each other they omitted pointless quarter final matches found in '96 and '15.

You don't need more than 3 knockout games ever in a cricket WC (2 semis and the final). QF matches really do make the group stage part all but pointless, especially in '96. At least last year Bangas snuck through over England.

 

[Prince EWS]

The issue with the 4 groups of 4 is that it does not provide enough games to make an accurate judgement to determine which team is better. Now whether that team happens to be India, Pak or whoever else doesn't really matter.

I don't really have an issue with this though. I don't think the World Cup necessarily has to reward the 'best' team; just the team that performs best across the tournament. It's obviously a bit of a balancing act to ensure that teams don't fall to what is essentially variance, but if you really think about it failing to win the tournament because you had a bad game against an associate in the group stage isn't really any more unmeritocratic than failing to win a tournament because you had a bad game in the semi-final or the final. I don't see people suggesting the knockout games should be three or five game series to make sure the better team progresses/wins.

I think the issue genuinely is financial. Broadcasters are willing to pay much more for the rights if the teams that draw big ratings in their broadcasting area are guaranteed or at least extremely likely to play a lot of games. If we want the ICC to have more money to finance teams like Ireland and Afghanistan then we probably do need to cop long initial group stages on the chin. This doesn't mean we have to cop them excluding the associates altogether though so some of the more recent proposals need to be heavily opposed.

 

[Dan]

I'd like to see the Champions Trophy re-structured along the lines of the FA Cup or the old C&G Trophy or something, whereby a shedload of the associates play the first few rounds, and the Test nations cut in at around Round 4 or whatever for the final part of the knockout stage. Might make the CT vaguely relevant, given now it just feels like a World Cup-lite, minus any associate representation at all.

 

[turnstyle]

Does anyone remember watching the '92 WC? So many dead rubber fixtures towards the end. The next World Cup isn't going to be any shorter time wise either. Because of the broadcast agreement, no matches can overlap so it's still going to be almost 2 months.

I'd be happy with 16 teams - 8 in a preliminary round like this t20 wc, then 4 progress. Two groups of 6, India guaranteed 5 matches, not too many dead rubbers. I guess top 4 go into the quarters.

It's never going to happen but a man can dream.

 

[turnstyle]

I don't support the 2011 or 2015 format either, but that doesn't make the 2007 format better in comparison. The issue with the 4 groups of 4 is that it does not provide enough games to make an accurate judgement to determine which team is better. Now whether that team happens to be India, Pak or whoever else doesn't really matter.

My personal suggestion would be to simply get rid of the "Quarter final" and just make it 2 groups of 7 with the top two moving right into the semis. That would make each game that much more critical because you would get some test nations eliminated in the group stage, making games virtual quarter finals almost by default as the group stages come to a close. Because each team would get 6 games to make a case for themselves rather than 2, which was the case in 2007.

Just causes a lot of dead rubbers.

 

[AndyZaltzHair]

Ireland vs Netherlands should be a good encounter despite being dead rubber

 

[Black_Warrior]

This is an excellent conversation. This is where CW is at it's best.

I guess the difference between rugby, football and cricket world cups is India. There's no single country in rugby or football that has such a detrimental effect on a tournament with an early exit. If the All Blacks were to be eliminated from the RWC in the first round there's enough interested in SA or Australia to keep it 'successful'. It's not good, but it's also not going to change in the short term so it's going to be 10 teams and 9 guaranteed fixtures for India. From listening to the other Associate skippers in the pressers, whilst they're not overly happy with it, they're mainly pissed off about the lack of fixtures and bilateral series between the events. It's a more than fair point.

Is India being eliminated really enough on its own to make a World Cup a financial failure? 2007 had a lot of other problems beyond just India and Pakistan playing poorly, like crappy attendance, facilities, sponsor issues etc. I don't think the 2015 World Cup would have been a financial failure just because India got eliminated early, for example.

Of course, it's not totally comparable for a range of reasons, but I think that might be overstating India's power a little bit, they're not the only country in world cricket that brings in money. It was the BCCI after all who came out after the 2007 world cup and said the format sucked and they would make sure it got changed for 2011 to avoid a possible early India exit, it wasn't the ICC. I think it's more that India has a huge amount of power for broader financial reasons (tv rights deals that include the World Cup etc) than that India's success or failure in a tournament determines the financial outcomes of that particular tournament. So when the BCCI says something like that the ICC takes it seriously, unlike in soccer where if the Spanish FA came out and said the World Cup format was bad because Spain got a hard group in 2014 as reigning champions and got eliminated, FIFA would just laugh at them.

Great posts. A few things we have to remember though when talking about World Cups of other sports such as football and rugby 1) is the difference in length and nature. Football World Cup can easily fit in 3 games in a day and the chief broadcaster can easily fit them in without much hassle. A cricket World Cup can maximum have 2 games in a day

2) Broadcasting revenue is by far the number one source of revenue and naturally it is far far more important to cricket's revenue stream. I don't want to make this about let's gang up on India and blame BCCI because a lot of it is beyond ICC or BCCI. Star Sports has emerged as the largest cricket broadcaster just by virtue of their reach in Asia. They are available in places like Malaysia or Singapore with significant South Asian expat communities, not to mention the big 4 South Asian countries. This gives Star Sports, access to the largest market for cricket. And Star Sports is based in India.

Channels like Sky Sports or Channel 9 or Super Sport just don't have the scale or reach to be a viable competitor when it comes to global ICC events. This is what makes India's exit a problem because the ratings for the games after India crashing in the first round will just plummet. This is not India's or BCCI's fault, but more the failure of the other broadcasters to expand beyond their local markets or a reflection of the lack of importance they give to cricket. Star Sports have 4 dedicated sports channels, which means they can easily accommodate 2 even 3 games in a day. Sky Sports can do that but not sure about the rest.

3) Football, being the number 1 sport in the world, has various regions as chief markets whereas cricket only has South Asia. I know this is not news but sometimes we aren't aware of what the consequences are for this or what it really means. When a World Cup takes place in the West Indies, which is in a completely different part of the world, the time difference that West Indies has with the rest of the cricketing world and more importantly the South Asian market was a major factor behind the failure of that World Cup. Football does not have to deal with this because a World Cup in Brazil might be at an odd time for Europe or Asia Pacific but it's a great time for the entire South American region which is Football crazy. This is why multiple regional markets can be so advantageous. A World Cup in Australia/New Zealand is suitable timewise for the Asian market but perhaps not so much for Europe and West Indies and vice versa.

4) In order to adjust for time difference and cater to the TV market, cricket World Cups have to be longer events because Broadcasters want the major games to be scheduled on weekends...so basically you will have non major games throughout the week (1 a day) and then the major games on Friday/Saturday/Sunday as was the case with 2015 World Cup. I don't see the point in criticising this because it just makes more business sense and there isn't really an alternative. I can certainly speak for myself that it suited me greatly that most of the games I would not want to miss were on the weekends otherwise I would not have been able to watch them.

Been really interesting listening to Ed Joyce and Colin Smith on Sky. They think it's not necessarily a money issue. They've been a real good insight into the Associates. I hope they use Ed more often.

Is this a podcast? Can I get a link?

 

[Jono]

f off rain

 

[fredfertang]

Why can't the BCCI control the weather?

#feelingletdownbybcci