World Cup 2019 - How Does The ICC Manage Simultaneously To Get Things So Right And So Wrong?

 

World Cup 2019

How Does The ICC Manage Simultaneously To Get Things So Right And So Wrong?

March 23^rd 2018

Today, we have seen the end of a wonderful tournament, apart from a rather irrelevant Final, which has all the cards to be a depressing anti-climax. The World Cup Qualifying Tournament in Zimbabwe has seen drama to the last ball and at least one match was played in a packed stadium, with closed gates. It is believed that the Zimbabwe v UAE game, that could have seen Zimbabwe qualify, is the first time that the ground has been full to its 22000 capacity to the point that the ground authorities have had to close the gates: and that, to watch the UAE play!

For once, the ICC has got something absolutely, totally right. Instead of pitching a group of Associates into the World Cup based on rankings – themselves calculated from a handful of games – they have matched the weakest Full Members and the strongest Associates in a qualifying tournament, with a feeder tournament that allowed smaller teams a route to a potential World Cup match with India or Australia at Lord’s.

The great winner of the feeder events was probably the romantic story of the tournament. In 2008, two of the sides buried in Division 5 of the World Cricket League were Afghanistan and Nepal. While Afghanistan’s rise was meteoric, Nepal’s, handicapped by a chaotic administration and the after-effects of the catastrophic earthquake, has been slower, but steady. In February, they were in Namibia for Division 2 of the World Cricket League, with its prize: a place in the World Cup Qualifying Tournament.

Only the top two of Canada, Kenya, Namibia, Nepal, Oman and UAE were going to qualify. In a blanket finish, four of Nepal’s matches went to last-over finishes: three of them were won in dramatic fashion (two by a single wicket, capped by an astonishing win against Canada), while the other, allowed UAE join the triple-tie for second and reach the qualifying tournament on Net Run Rate. For the Nepali cricketers, playing against sides with a World Cup tradition like Kenya, Namibia and Canada must have felt amazing; to top the table and have a chance to play against Full Members must have made the players feel that they had died and gone to heaven. Nepal only won two matches, but their victory against Papua New Guinea, to place Nepal in the seventh place play-off game, gave them ODI status for the next four years. For a small, poor country in Asia, this achievement has given the players and their country an incredible pride and self-belief. Nepal may not reach the heights that Afghanistan have, but do not bet against them becoming Full Members in a decade or so: Afghanistan have shown them that it is possible.

Teams currently in Division Five of the World Cricket League include Jersey, Germany and Ghana. They have seen how two, former Division Five sides have now risen to Full ODI status and know that the dream is possible. Like the pyramid in English football that allows a pub team to aspire one day to reach the Premier League, teams such a Norway, Germany, Surinam or Brazil can develop and grow and one day, maybe reach the World Cup itself. That is a magnificent development for cricket.

The World Cup Qualifying Tournament has seen drama from start to finish. In one of the early games Afghanistan’s last pair failed by just three runs to topple Zimbabwe. After three successive defeats, Afghanistan needed Zimbabwe to beat Hong Kong and then to beat Nepal themselves and, finally, for Nepal to surprise Hong Kong, just to get into the Super Sixes. They also needed the margins in the three games to turn out right to ensure that Nepal and Hong Kong both stayed behind on Net Run Rate. It was like putting one coin in the slot machine and winning the jackpot.

However, with teams carrying forward their points from other qualifiers in the group, Afghanistan started 2 points behind Ireland, 3 behind Scotland and Zimbabwe and 4 behind the West Indies. They had to win all three Super Sixes match and then have other results fall for them. Zimbabwe only had to beat an outclassed UAE in their final match to eliminate Afghanistan. UAE had not looked like challenging any of the other Super Six sides. Even when Duckworth-Lewis modified the target to 230 from 40 overs, Zimbabwe’s massive experience and array of talent should have knocked the target off easily: maybe they were over-confident but, somehow, they fell just short and Afghanistan lived… just. Even then they had to beat Ireland.

So, everything came down to one, last game. Ireland v Afghanistan – the winner would qualify for the World Cup. However, if the match were rained-off (and several games, especially in the warm-ups, had suffered very badly), Ireland would lead a quadruple tie on 5 points on Net Run Rate. There was though another scenario and, as the chase got tighter and tighter, it started to raise its head: a tie would put Zimbabwe through on Net Run Rate.

In the end, a single, poor over from Durham’s Barry McCarthy was probably the difference between the two sides. It went to the last over… just, but that one over gave Afghanistan momentum in a chase that seemed to be slipping away. Cricket can be cruel.

Here, the crass stupidity of the ICC shone through. We had had a brilliant tournament, with some good cricket played, passion and support from the fans, but the dictates of a smaller tournament meant that only two of West Indies, Zimbabwe, Scotland, Ireland and Afghanistan, all of whom have played some superb cricket, could qualify.

The ICC has rightly been condemned for ridiculously long tournaments in the past (the World Cup in the West Indies seemed to last for ever). And for some pretty silly formats. They have also fiddled with the format time and again to try and ensure that never again will India or Pakistan fail to reach the second phase (too expensive in lost TV rights). They have had tournaments in which a side such as Australia only needed to beat The Netherlands and Namibia to reach the second phase. If there are too many teams, we have too many meaningless and unattractive matches and a tournament that seems to imitate the Hundred Years War.

That said, the smaller teams need to play the bigger teams to evolve and improve and need to play several games, not just one. That is what has been wonderful about the World Cup Qualifier. And, for the West Indies and Zimbabwe it has been a reality check: it is all very well for Jason Holder to talk about winning the World Cup, but they only barely beat Scotland on D/L, lost to Afghanistan and were pushed very hard by Zimbabwe – that is not the sort of form to strike terror into India, or Australia… or even England.

The ICC has gone from one ridiculous extreme to another. While a sixteen-team World Cup is too many at present (although the gap in the eight teams below the top eight is closing rapidly), to have just ten teams is too few. Twelve would have been a reasonable compromise and, on this scenario, Scotland and Zimbabwe would have joined the West Indies and Afghanistan in the World Cup.  With three groups of four, the top two and the two best third place sides qualifying for the Quarter-Finals, the tournament would be compact and there would be a chance of one or more of the qualifiers making the knock-out stages. Add a Plate Tournament for the sides that do not reach the Quarter Finals and each team is guaranteed a minimum of four matches, but there would be just twenty-eight matches in all.

Anatomy of Another Embarassment

 

 

Cricket World Cup 2015

 

Anatomy of Another Embarassment I

 

March 12^th 2015

 

You have to feel for Eoin Morgan. Given the captaincy with England in disarray, only weeks before the World Cup, there was always a danger that he would be overwhelmed by the task. When he was appointed I wrote of the options facing the selectors:

“Had it been Joe Root then the endless speculation about Alistair Cook losing the Test captaincy too would have started afresh. Had it been James Taylor, fans would have been stunned by a really adventurous move. Morgan is the steady move: he was the regular stand-in already and was captain for England’s only ODI series win for eighteen months. That said, the calls for Morgan himself to be dropped have got louder and louder over the last year so, unless the captaincy sparks a glorious revival in him, it may only be a short-term appointment.”

After a bright start, with fans and press praising his pro-active captaincy, things have gone very, very pear-shaped and ended with England’s ignominious exit from the World Cup. 

Asking Eoin Morgan to captain while struggling with his own form was always a risk. After a brilliant series in Australia last winter, with runs flowing like a river in flood, the last year has been a disaster: 28 matches, 491 runs at 18.8. Even the two matches when he has scored runs – 62 v Sri Lanka in the 4^th ODI and 121 v Australia in the first match of the tri-series – led to heavy defeats. A series of scores since the start of the winter of 1, 62, 5, 0, 4, 121, DNB, 0, 2, 0, 0, 17, 46 (v Scotland), 27 and 0 is a pretty desperate one. It is 92 runs in his last 8 innings, exactly half of them against the lowest-ranked team in the World Cup.

At the same time, to make his job harder, he has been given a hamstrung side riven with strange tactical decisions. James Taylor was doing very well at #3, so he was dropped down to #6 in the World Cup. Alex Hales played three matches in Sri Lanka and the warm-up against Pakistan, but was dropped for Gary Ballance in the World Cup. Critics would point to the fact that Hales has not been a success: 153 runs in 8 ODIs, but that still gives him an average marginally superior to his captain over the last year. More importantly, Hales is a player who has shown, albeit in T20, that he can go berserk and destroy a bowling attack: Hales was an attacking move – 15 overs in partnership with Moeen Ali could have set up a winning total against any attack in the world. Instead, the selectors took a settled side that was beginning to show signs of gelling and tinkered with it for the first game of the World Cup. In came “safe option” Ballance who, after a promising start to his ODI career, has stalled badly. Ballance has only passed 10 in one of his last eight and two of his last ten ODI innings. Short of cricket – he had had just one “slap and giggle” innings since September in a 15-a-side warm-up – he came up against first Australia and then New Zealand, the two class attacks of the World Cup, which was no way to find form and confidence. Ballance should have made way for Hales in the critical game v Sri Lanka. What better opponent than the one against which he scored England’s first T20 century to unleash Hales? He is just one innings away from making his breakthrough and pity Afghanistan if he decides that it should be against them.

The bowling attack is another case of chronic mismanagement. Chris Woakes has taken the new ball all winter with some success so, of course, he should be relieved of that responsibility in the World Cup. It is true that Stuart Broad and Jimmy Anderson have been as good a new ball pair as any in the world, but neither had played in months and both are still feeling their way back. The feeling must be that two disastrous tours of Australia have been one too many for Jimmy Anderson: I can see him retiring from ODIs after the World Cup and from all international cricket by the end of the summer.

Stuart Broad is another player under pressure. He admits that his nerve has gone with the bat. Although still capable of useful cameos, there has not been a 50 in any format since the 1^st Ashes Test in summer 2013. After 26 wickets in the six Tests last summer, the winter has been less kind: 8 wickets in 10 ODIs and some painful poundings at the hands of various batsmen. The public are on his case. Actively disliked by many fans of other teams due to his abrasiveness and frequent brushes with authority, he has never been a favourite of the English fans either who have rarely given him the credit that he deserves. Troubled by multiple injuries, he is not going to continue playing all formats of the game. If he is to continue to be an effective Test bowler he will probably need to retire from ODIs and T20. There is a danger that he may be pushed into retiring in all formats too.

England have taken a punt on Steve Finn this winter. On paper, returns of 5-71 and 3-26 in the World Cup look pretty good, especially when combined with a 5-33 and a 3-36 v India in the tri-series. You then look closer and see that the 5-71 owed a lot to a hat-trick from the last three balls of the innings after a fearful pummelling and that all three wickets were from catches in the deep. The 3-26 was against an over-matched Scotland, who still pushed England far closer than even the most pessimistic English fans had feared. While Woakes and particularly Broad were bowling deliveries that passed 90mph against Sri Lanka, Steve Finn was well under and for a good part of his spell cruising in the low-80s. Finn is no longer the attacking weapon that he was, aggressive and bowling regularly at over 90mph. However, England have persisted with him as they did with Jade Dernbach, hoping that he would click and he has not; at least, not consistently. Probably he should have been replaced with Jordan after the New Zealand game, although there was a case for playing Tredwell, despite – or maybe due to the fielding restrictions.

Jimmy Anderson lost his way so completely in 2004 that it was four years before he was ready to return – an unwanted exile blamed on the coaching that he had received. Steve Finn is young enough that he can afford two seasons in county cricket to re-invent himself and still have several years at the top level, but he needs to go back to Middlesex, play day in, day out and get back his pace and bounce.

So, to add to his personal troubles with the bat, Eoin Morgan has laboured with an iffy attack in which the most reliable control bowler was usually his non-specialist spinner, Moeen Ali, without the safety valve of being able to bowl 4 or 5 overs of dobbers from Ravi Bopara if one of the seamers got punished. This despite the fact that in the last year or so Bopara was often England’s most economical bowler and rarely proved expensive. Eoin Morgan needed options, but could change the names, he could change the ends but, in the absence of a specialist spinner, a left arm seamer, or an express quick, could not change the bowling.

In a few hours England face their final game and a potential final humiliation. On a pitch expected to offer pace and bounce they will come up against a 90+mph bowler who wants to make a name for himself. The odds are that even a wounded and demotivated England will be far too good for Afghanistan, but there is a nice parallelism in that the only side that either England or Afghanistan have beaten in this World Cup has been Scotland: England’s win was somewhat the more convincing of the two, but the Afghans see a chance to take a historic scalp and England look ready to be taken.

A big win may buy Peter Moores and Eoin Morgan some time. A defeat will surely see the end of at least the latter and potentially of both. The damage though has been done.