There is a cricket World Cup next month; it starts in just 30 days’ time — in case you had forgotten or didn’t know. You can be forgiven. They do come around quite often these days now that the ICC has scheduled the T20 version every two years.
The governing body of the world game has numerous responsibilities, most of which it carries out very efficiently, especially the organisation of global events.
It is hardly the fault of those employed at headquarters that the BCCI holds “veto rights” on any decisions or strategies with which it does not agree. Calls for ICC officials to “stand up” to India are made, inevitably, by people who don’t understand the dynamic or have never had a capricious boss who might sack them on the spot.
The responsibility the ICC takes most seriously, however, is the maximisation of revenue generation. It is not for them to debate the “less is more” argument or to discuss why every other team sport which sees the value of a World Cup stages it no more than once every four years.
Anyway, cricket is different because it has three different formats, so they can all have their own World Cup. So now there is at least one every year, the biennial T20 events sharing the four-year cycle with the 50-over event and the Champions Trophy — with a World Test Championship final also every two years.
A vast amount of money is generated, and, for now, it is safeguarded until after the 2027 World Cup, to be staged mostly in South Africa. But there is only one global broadcaster can afford the current multibillion-dollar rights deal, and they have made it clear that if renegotiations take place, the numbers will be going down, not up.
One of the reasons for that, apart from the dilution of prestige, is the well-intentioned expansion of the T20 events to 20 teams. With respect to the efforts of the players who earned their teams’ qualification, Italy, Canada, Oman and the Netherlands aren’t going to attract many viewers. And there is only so much “bundling” that sponsors will tolerate for their cash.
The number of high-profile players retiring from the T20 format also sends a strong message about how (un)important they regard the shortest iteration of the game. National boards, too, clearly don’t afford the T20 World Cup the same reverence as they do the “real” World Cup or the Test Championship.
There was a charming line from Cricket New Zealand in the statement announcing their squad to compete in India and Sri Lanka next month to explain why their 15-man group would likely to be reduced to 13 players at some stage: “With [Lockie] Ferguson’s and [Matt] Henry’s partners due to give birth during the tournament period, it is likely they will be granted short-term paternity leave.”
I may be wrong, but it’s possible that both fast bowlers might have thought longer about popping back to New Zealand to cut the umbilical cord in different circumstances.
South Africa, too, has displayed a willingness to “gamble” with their squad selection and stray from the conventional conservatism. The decisions to omit Ryan Rickelton and Tristan Stubbs and pick long-shot Jason Smith might not have been taken if the tournament still had the ounce more gravitas it had when it was every four years. But they’ll get to do it all again in Australia and New Zealand in 2028, in the blink of an eye.
The undoubted benefit of diluting the knockabout version is the strengthening of the elixir of tournaments, which, clearly, do matter more — to the players if not the accountants. Fifty-over cricket was thought to be on its knees in the two years after the 2023 World Cup, but with fewer of the longer limited-overs matches being played, it is being appreciated once again, and anticipation for the World Cup on these shores is growing.
And despite a largely tepid Ashes series and fewer Test matches being played than in previous decades, the ultimate format remains at the top of the pyramid for most male cricketers. Its scarcity outside the “big three” — India, Australia and England — might yet prove to be its downfall, but, for the moment, absence appears to be making the heart grow fonder.
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