Subcontinent, substandard

We’re at the halfway stage of the 2011 ICC Cricket World Cup in India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, and in truth, it feels like we’ve been playing for months. Nothing has yet been decided, the round robin matches plodding along at a snail’s pace, with the quarter final line-up of “Super 8s” not being decided for at least another week. The cricket has been thrilling, the excitement regularly involving England in a tournament that has so far been marked with absurdly mixed fortunes for our Ashes heroes. Meanwhile, magnificent individual performances have littered the competition, such as Shahid Afridi’s bowling master class to Ross Taylor and Kevin O’Brien’s heroics with the bat.

The whole event hit trouble before it even started. In March 2009, the Sri Lankan team envoy was attacked in Lahore by terrorist gunmen, prompting Pakistan to be stripped of host status a month after the incident, due to the “uncertain security situation” in the country, consigning the ICC’s flagship 4-host-countries tournament to the dustbin. On the other hand, this is the first time Bangladesh have hosted the World Cup, pleasingly bringing revenue and publicity to a cricketing nation on the rise.

Attendances have been mixed; understandably, games involving the host nations have been extremely full while the lesser teams such as Kenya, Canada and the Netherlands do not fill stadiums in poor countries with expensive ticket prices. However, the numbers of people in the grounds are a lot more than in the West Indies, expensively constructed yet routinely empty stadiums in the Caribbean 4 years ago still a haunting memory which sweeps through the corridors of ICC headquarters, and in that respect they have done well to improve the level of interest this time around.

However, interest in the World Cup is undoubtedly going to be lost if the current timescale of 6 weeks is kept to by the ICC in future tournaments. The round-robin format drags on and on, taking over a month alone, with the two groups of 7 simply ensuring a passage through to the quarter finals for the 8 major countries in world cricket. Yes, the minnows pull off shocks at times, such as the Irish victory over England, but on the whole in World Cups, mismatches such as New Zealand bowling Kenya out for 69 before polishing off the runs in 8 overs have been too common a sight. In my eyes, the group stages are a cash cow, designed for profit only, and a shorter tournament (with less teams, if need be) is imperative for the ICC suits to contemplate for the future.

Concerning the competition in question, it is impossible to deny that there have been some absolutely terrific matches and individual performances. The trend was set early, the very first match saw India scoring a mammoth 370, indeed scores of over 300 seemingly the norm this time around. Undeniably the match of the tournament to date has to be Ireland’s defeat of England, the minnows succeeding in the highest run chase ever in World Cup history. England’s draw against India, their defeat of South Africa, South Africa’s chasing down of India, New Zealand’s demolition of Pakistan, the list of memorable matches is endless, and that can only be a credit to the players who seem determined to surpass each other with brilliant performances day after day.

Individually, you cannot look past Kevin O’Brien’s fastest ever World Cup century off just 50 balls for Ireland against England, beating Matty Hayden’s previous record by 16 deliveries, a brutal display of hitting that will live long in the memory. Yet Ross Taylor’s magnificent display against Pakistan, AB De Villiers’ consistently brilliant innings, Tillakaratne Dilshan’s heroics in spite of false and spurious rumours of a failed dope test, and many more superb displays with the bat all points to a high standard of cricket for the spectator to enjoy.

Finally, it is worth spending a few column inches on England. Purely and simply, the team that set off for Australia in early November are absolutely shattered. Jonathan Agnew calculated that they have spent 4 days at home since late October, an astonishing statistic and one which explains a lot about their strange tournament to date. Missing friends and family, travelling thousands of miles from one continent to another and living out of the suitcase has to take its toll at some stage, and evidently, that time is now.

Physical fatigue is rife. Jimmy Anderson’s bowling is a mere shadow of his displays down under, while tempers are flaring between teammates who are probably sick of the sight of each other by now. When the ebullient Graeme Swann, normally the heart and soul of the England camp, is seen arguing with the umpire because the ball was damp in the recent defeat by Bangladesh, you know there are problems.

The argument against all this is, of course, that they are professional sportspeople, paid to play a game they are talented in, and they should stop whinging and get on with it. They seem to be up for the big games, eking out the draw against India whilst beating South Africa, but they are embarrassing when playing the smaller teams such as Bangladesh and the Netherlands, the match against the latter descending into farce when they couldn’t even count the correct amount of fielders required inside the circle. They should go through, but the likelihood of them winning the entire thing is slim, unless they can somehow conjure some of the spirit shown in their demolition of the Australians this winter.