This week we enter the knockout stage of the Cricket World Cup, with a quarter-line up which was essentially a foregone conclusion at the outset of the tournament a month ago. However the infinite insanity of the ICC, creating a tournament format to ensure a maximum number of games for the financial lynch pins of the sport and avoid the kind of economic farce of 2007, must not detract from what has been a thoroughly entertaining month of Cricket. The nature of this most unique of sports fundamentally ensures that mismatches will always find a way to happen. The default way of things would seem to involve whining about the group stage being boring or predictable because of the lack of quality match ups, while in another Internet tab ranting spiritedly on how evil the ICC are to get rid of the Associate nations for forthcoming World Cups. The supposed faultiness of Cricket's showpiece tournament has become a self-fulfilling prophecy, with the incompetence of the ICC and the irritability of a demanding cricketing public dooming the World Cup to a perpetual lack of appreciation.
By every logical measure this 10th edition of the World Cup has been an unqualified success, particularly compared to the Caribbean abomination preceding. Ticket sales have been excellent, and prices mercifully brought back down to Earth unlike four years ago. As for the Cricket itself, we largely have England to thank for the excitement and tension of the group stage. Group A admittedly suffered from the prolonged and foregone format, but Group B was anyone's guess until the final days. If Bangladesh had the experience to deal with home expectation and avoid their spectacular collapses, if England had been unable to contain the West Indies' thrilling run chase, and had Asoka De Silva not committed the tournament's biggest umpiring howler just as Ireland looked set to overcome the West Indies, the results could have been very different. It is just a shame really that the ICC as ever had to be so unconscionably simple-minded as to come up with such a staid format. It's amazing to think how great could this World Cup could have been. As it stands, if the final seven games provide their fair share of drama we still might have the best ever edition of the modern dozen-plus team coloured clothing tournament yet.
Something must be done about the absurdity of having Quarter Finals in a tournament which, with respect to Bangladesh, has a clear eight team hierarchy. You only have to look at the thrashing World No.7 New Zealand doled out to the 10th full member Zimbabwe to understand what an inopportune juncture for dramatic tension a cutoff of eight is. The next tournament must be different, and lo and behold it is. You'd think the ICC might have seen reason. But alas this remains a notion of a cricket fan's wildest imaginings. Only the ICC could have the genius to devise an infinitely worse format for 2015's tournament in Australia and New Zealand. The format is not finalised yet, but what is assured is that only 10 teams will be admitted to the tournament. The decision to, in all probability, entirely exclude the nations where Cricket remains at its most relatable and innocent, and who most vitally need development and exposure, is tacit confirmation that the power brokers who run Cricket have their brains in their back pockets. As a 20 year old Australian, 2015 will be the first World Cup I'll have the pleasure of experiencing without a dummy in my mouth (notwithstanding the need I still have for this one judging by this article.) I can attest to the immense disappointment many Cricket fans must feel at this money-grubbing decision. But as previously stated, 2011's structure too will not do. So to what middle ground do we go?
The Solution
Twelve teams. Two groups of six. The Top two teams from each group advance to the Semi Finals. 33 games. Roughly 30 days.
For all the complexities and passions of the World Cup it's really quite simple. 14 teams is too many. 10 is not enough. 12 is right in the middle. I'll go into the main two reasons in detail, but the benefits of the system are self explanatory. There would be a third less games than the 49 in 2011's World Cup. The tournament would be concise but retain all its status and grandeur, it would be compact but still open to developing nations.
The Associates
Aside from Ireland, and the odd fleeting patches of promise from the Dutch and the Canadians, the Associates have been disappointing at this World Cup and have been the primary contributor to the bad taste in many people's mouths. It is clear that I am of the popular view that 10 teams is patently unfair and the Associate members must be given an opportunity. But in the current state of play, 14 teams is too many for complex reasons beyond the obvious. Generally the opposing arguments relating to the minnows are that on the one hand, they need international exposure, but on the other hand what good is going around for a month getting constantly thrashed? Both these problems can be fixed by processes completely outside the boundaries of the quadrennial showcase of Cricket. Firstly more bilateral contests between Associate nations and Full member nations must be set up. But this is both unlikely to fully eventuate because of the self-interested Cricket boards, and not the full extent of the fix. Secondly, the in-house stakes need to be raised.
Four slots is too many, and there are too few Associates with a genuine Cricketing infrastructure. In the foreseeable future the 13th and 14th ranked teams in the world are not going to be of sufficient quality to warrant a World Cup berth. If only two slots were available, (one of which would surely go to Ireland), the onus would be on those nations (and the ICC to support them) to get to the level they need to get to qualify for a World Cup. The overall competitive level of the World Cricket League, involving the Associate nations, would clearly increase, and every World Cup would be guaranteed two respectable teams who had to achieve a certain high level just to qualify. In time all the front running Associates would develop and the World Cup could expand beyond 12 teams. But either way it moves forward instead of treading water. The overall quality has generally increased, but the fact remains that there is a huge gulf between the world's 8th and 9th ranked teams and the 13th and 14th, just as there was 20 years ago.
Why Quarter-Finals do not work
On the surface this would seem obvious, as it has become indelibly customary for cricket fans to frustratedly fret about how irrelevant the first month of the World Cup is before the inevitable eight teams line up in the knockout stage. But now the Quarter Finals are here everyone is sufficiently pumped up and satisfied that the remainder of the tournament will be both dramatic and fair. Neither is necessarily so. Because the quality differential between Cricket's 1st and 8th ranked teams is so great, Quarter Finals more often than not result in one (or both) of two undesirable situations. The first has been exemplified in a blazing pile of Caribbean ineptitude this week at the World Cup, where the lowest ranked of the eight teams left, The West Indies, served up nothing but a variety platter of different types of awful, and were mercilessly browbeaten by Pakistan, a team not known for being too clinical.
The second scenario we have thankfully escaped to any notable level at this World Cup. Regardless of whether the tournament is 12,14 or 16 teams, making the Quarter Finals can be achieved exclusively by beating only the minnows in your group, even if thoroughly outclassed in every game against a Test playing nation. England's infamous 1996 World Cup team achieved this ignominious distinction, finishing 4th in their six team group with just two wins from five, over hapless debutants the United Arab Emirates and The Netherlands. The games against New Zealand, Pakistan and South Africa all ended in comprehensive defeats. By finishing fourth you would play the top team from the opposing group, who may have a peerless unbeaten record. There is every chance this game would skew to either unsatisfying extreme, either the undefeated team would utterly humiliate their below-par opponents, or because of the fantastic beauty of Cricket, an upset might happen. I am all for upsets and am not laying claim to knockout stages inherently being flawed because 'the best team might not win.' An English Football style League only model is out of date in the modern world of corporate sport, where it is the big money events like Grand Finals that bring home the bacon. But I feel that in a cricketing context it is too far towards the extremities of unfairness to have scenario like the 1996 World Cup once again. In 96 South Africa won all five group games but then lost to the West Indies who'd won just two from five (including an astonishing capitulation to lowly Kenya) on the back of a single heroic innings by Brian Lara.
The sport is not football. Cricket operates in a uniquely bizarre way, where different nations in its hierarchy are allowed or denied to play the actual primary form of the game. There are only ten test nations, basic mathematical logic tells you that eight is too big a sufficient number to weed down towards subsequent to a group stage. Teams like England in 1996, and this year's West Indians, prove that the Cricket World Cup with eight teams in the final knockout stage fails to convey what a final knockout stage of such a tournament should convey. That is the impression that we are now down to the true final few elites, who have already achieved so much and now must jump the last but biggest hurdles on the way to glory. But four teams is a different kettle of fish.
Why Semi Finals work
I am really quite astonished that, of all the varying and extensive dialogues I've participated in, and opinions I've read, no-one seems to to have thought of or publicly aired the idea of going straight to the Semis. It is surprising because it feels so fundamentally right and obvious. One reason for the oversight may be that in the late 20th and 21st century, sport as an entire entity has softened up. As an Australian I can readily point to some of the recent finals systems used in our football codes, such as Top 10 of 20, and ridiculously, Top 8 of 14. When did finals criterion, both in a single tournament like a World Cup, and in an annual league post-season, become so much easier to fulfil. NRL teams in this decade can win only 10 or 11 of 24 games, yet make the finals and conceivably be only four wins from premiership glory. It is no coincidence that by far the most exciting and successful Cricket World Cup I've ever experienced, was South Africa 2003. It had the harshest ratio of teams participating to teams advancing. There were 14 teams and just 6 would move on, the top 3 from each group, into a Super Six stage. South Africa, The West Indies, England and Pakistan all failed to advanced, and they all invariably were involved in tense life or death thrillers in the process. However the Super Six concept, albeit one I enjoyed, has also proven unpopular and untenable because of both its needless complexity, and it drawing the length of the tournament out a bit too much. So all that leaves is Super Four. The good old Semi-Final.
Cricket in its current state is perfect for a 10/12/14 to 4 straight Semi-Final scenario. Six teams fill the top echelon roughly, with New Zealand slightly behind and then the following group beginning at the West Indies. If you had to pick a single number as your cutoff point between stages at a World Cup, for the highest possible drama and unpredictability as to who would and wouldn't make the cut, it would have to be four. This also shortens the tournament overall. Twelve teams in two groups of six would play 30 games, and then there would be a mere three further games. Every group game between major nations would not be genuinely of value, instead of holding a largely artificially derived value where its all about 'where in the top four' a team might finish. Behind this facade, everyone knows that both teams are still in the tournament regardless, and this reduces the stakes tenfold. But if it were only the top two advancing, a team would know that one loss and they may be out, two losses and they probably will be.
Happily this World Cup has amplified the wisdom behind the concept in the way it has played out. If just the top two teams from both groups moved on to the next stage in this World Cup, then the last three showcase games involving Test nations in the group stage would all have been sudden death blockbusters. The 42nd and last Group game between India and the West Indies was 2nd vs 3rd. The winner would have made the Semi-Finals, the loser gone home. Before that, Group A climaxed with Australia vs Pakistan and New Zealand vs Sri Lanka. Ignoring unusual happenings, this is a straight shootout. The two winners came 1st and 2nd, the two losers came 3rd and 4th. This may seem harsh on Australia, to miss out from a single loss in their last game, but that's the way it goes. Australia and Sri Lanka had the unique circumstance of their game (which as it turned out was THE pivotal game to decide 2nd and 3rd in the group) being washed out and the points shared. You can't legislate against extenuating circumstance. But for Australia, elimination would have been fair punishment for their scratchy wins over Canada and Kenya. Therein lies the final bonus gem of the format. Every single game, even those monotonous mismatches, take on new importance and tension because net run rate becomes even more vitally important to a team's very survival. Take note ICC. It only needs a careful tweak and your World Cup will retain its former glory.
