World Cup 2019: Opinion - Why this will be the greatest World Cup of all time
The 12th edition of the ICC Cricket World Cup began with a win for hosts England over South Africa. The format of the tournament has been changed from the previous few editions - the number of teams have come down from 14 to 10, with each team playing each other in the round-robin stage.
There has been some criticism of the format. BBC Sport had termed the reduction in the number of teams as 'nonsense'. Many players like William Porterfield and Sikandar Raza had also expressed their dissatisfaction. Many writers and experts are of the view that this will reduce the popularity and global appeal of the game. Some are saying that the tournament will be long and boring. While few others have the ideology that the excitement level will keep on declining as the tournament progresses.
So basically, the criticism is regarding the format of the tournament. It is true that the tournament has been shortened from 14 teams to 10. But this should not reduce the popularity of the tournament in any way.
This time around, all the ten teams are quite evenly matched and there are no outright winners before any match. The unpredictability of the World Cup will remain intact until the very end.
Earlier, we had three knockout games for the teams that made it to the finals. This time around, the points table will start taking up shape after the initial round of matches. And for most of the teams, every game will feel like a knockout in the latter stages.
We all are very positive about the FIFA World Cup format where the teams have to go through rigorous qualification rounds to play in the World Cup. ICC has also done the same. Afghanistan and the West Indies had to play their best cricket to be here in England. We have to accept the fact that the quality range is pretty wide between teams in cricket than in football so the number of teams will be lesser.
The World Cup is being played in England, where the grounds are relatively small and pitches will be flat. The most number of 400+ totals are scored in England and we will surely see a few innings of such gigantic scores this time around as well. However, there will be matches where teams will fail to chase down targets around 230-240 due to the pressure of the World Cup.
The pitches will start to deteriorate as well, and the spinners will come into play in the latter half of the tournament. All this will only add to the balance of cricket between bat and ball and increase the unpredictability and excitement level of the tournament.
Is the tournament long? Yes. But will it become boring as the tournament progresses? Absolutely not. The pressure will start creeping into the teams as soon as they lose a few games. This can happen to any team, be it England or India - such will be the nature of the tournament.
Virat Kohli had stated that this will be the most competitive World Cup of all time. Gautam Gambhir had quoted that we are going to see the real world champion this time because no team can hide from anyone, everyone will face each other once in the league phase.
This format is best-suited for cricket right now because it will maintain the unpredictability and balance in the game. There will be a lot less one-sided games this time around. The competitiveness will be sustained throughout the tournament.
Yes, there is one drawback regarding the format. There is a possibility that one team may win 8 or 9 of their league matches and finish at the top of the table and play the 4th ranked team that has won just 6 or maybe lesser number of games. And in the semi-finals, there is no reward for consistent performance in the league phase. So, one bad day, and you are out. Chances are that the team winning the World Cup may have won a lesser number of games than the top-ranked team in the league phase.
This is exactly what happened in 1992 where Pakistan won the World Cup by winning six games in all and New Zealand were ousted by Pakistan in semis, but they won seven games in total. ICC will surely look into it and might come up with something like the IPL playoffs. But that discussion is for the future.
The present is that we are going to have a glorious summer where teams will give their everything to bring the Cup to their nation. Most of the games are already sold-out. All we need to do is, sit back and enjoy the absolute brilliance of the game.