Nerve Endings Firing Away

In the Cricket World, one game overshadows all the others. It is the India – Pakistan clash that fans from the sub-continent look forward to. The match is considered far more important than even the final unless of course, the final features these two countries. But that perfection has never occurred. Considering that most of the cricket fans and World Cup viewers are from these two countries and any clash between the two arch rivals is considered war, the television viewership ratings go through the roof.

We may not remember other memorable matches of the previous World Cups but I bet we remember all the India-Pakistan matches, right from the ‘jumping jack’ Miandad in 92 to ‘we don’t want the Cup, we want this match’ in 96 to feverish chants of fan prayers during the 99 and 03 editions. Thankfully, India has managed to maintain a perfect record in the World Cups against Pakistan regardless of their performances elsewhere.

The World Cup organizers predictably put both countries in different groups and considering the unpredictable nature of each country’s performance in high octane tournaments, every subsequent clash predicts make-or-break fortunes for either country. So the World Cup organizers i.e. the ICC and the contracted television broadcasters are keen to make the most of this opportunity and wish they know of the venue and date ahead of time so as to pump up the hype even more.

An unnamed Rediff writer chanced upon a supposedly ‘secret’ schedule for the second round aka Super Eight of the 2007 Cricket World Cup that pits India against Pakistan on Sunday, April 15. The writer points us to the ICC website that has the schedule but it doesn’t show any such thing there. As you know, the Super Eight begins after the preliminary rounds featuring four groups that play within each group. Only two teams from each group will proceed to the Super Eight. And conveniently, each group features two prominent teams with the rest made up by minnows like Bermuda, Scotland, Ireland, etc. So did the ICC goof up or did Rediff see something wrong? We’ll never know because there is no screenshot to back it up. A blogger worth his salt would never fail to do that :) We’ll never know the truth unless some insider spills the beans. If true, why isn’t an upset taken into consideration? We have had enough upsets in previous editions of the tournament. In fact, even the regular test-playing nations in each group are ranked. Or probably, it was just a trial run of a hypothetical schedule not meant for public consumption.

That brings us to the issue of inclusion of teams that are clearly outclassed by their heavyweight counterparts. Should we even include them and ‘waste’ 13 days and 24 games? Well, I am not as cynical as Rediff is. Although these countries are hopeless inadequate, the exposure at this world stage might probably give them the impetus to work on their game. It might encourage kids back home to play cricket and best of all, keep the possibility of upsets alive. After all, who can forget Kenya and Bangladesh? Heck, Kenya even reached the semi-finals last time around (how did that happen?)

However, on the flip side The Netherlands has been playing in World Cups forever and has shown no indication of support back in their country. There is not even a marginal improvement in their performance. But I guess, these teams reach the World Cup through a ICC tournament that serves as qualifiers for little-known teams (which have a host of immigrants from the subcontinent anyway). The problem is that we continue seeing the same teams reach the World Cup apart from an occasional Bermuda. The gap between Test-playing cricketing nations and their fledging counterparts is vast. Any result against expectations is clearly a fluke and probably rightly so because we don’t see a long-term lasting effect or pattern. At the same time, the gap between the countries that regularly make the World Cup and the ones that don’t also seems to be equally large.

Cricket is insanely popular in the Indian subcontinent and other Commonwealth countries but even after so many years, it has failed to break into new territory. Let alone United States but other European or Asian countries that are madly in love with football are least interested in cricket. Probably we need even a shorter version of the game without letting it denigrate into a slog fest.