Cricket World Cup 2011 that no one cares about anymore

Cup that no one cares about anymore

Five quick questions to get your weekend started: When does the 2011 ICC Cricket World Cup begin? How many squads have already been announced for the 14-team mega-event? Mumbai’s still-being-renovated Wankhede Stadium hosts its first match on ________?

What’s the reworked format of the first group stage (from which India crashed out in the West Indies four years ago)? Are you feeling the World Cup buzz?

Irrespective of how many of you got the first four right (February 19, Three, March 13 and two groups of seven teams, four to qualify from each no matter how badly India play, the ICC has made sure they will go through), the answer to Question 5 is a NO, like the ones handed out to Sourav Ganguly and Chris Gayle at Bangalore’s big bazaar last week.

Four years ago, every game played in the build-up to the ICC’s (former) showpiece event had an underlying theme, with every run scored by Ganguly, every wicket picked by Zaheer Khan and every statement made by Greg Chappell adding to the intrigue that had enveloped Indian cricket at the time.
Ahead of the 2003 edition, it was all about whether India, on a fairly good run in the 12 months leading to South Africa, could recover in time from their confidence-shattering tour of New Zealand, where the ball swung around with such unpredictability that it could’ve taught the IPL’s governing council a thing or two.

This time around, there’s actually nothing but a rather aloof kind of silence. So much so that even India’s 135-run loss in Durban on Wednesday, their second-biggest margin of defeat against South Africa, has been met with indifference.

There are a few reasons for this. The drama surrounding the IPL auction last week is the obvious target – what hope does Rohit Sharma scoring a 28-ball 11 have of competing with Rohit Sharma being paid $2.1m in talking-point stakes?
Pointless one-dayers

Another is the fact that there’s too much cricket being played, though it’s the increasing pointlessness of the hundreds of one-dayers played every year that actually rankles. Footballers, for example, play more games a year on an average than cricketers do.

Just between now and the end of February, English Premier League side Arsenal will play almost every three days. Yet you’ll seldom hear fans complaining about too much football because there’s a larger context to every game, a point (or three) to be made each time the players step on to the pitch.

It’ll be practically impossible to replicate a football league system in international cricket, to make every game count for something more tangible than a ranking system that’s as hard to understand as the logic behind the government’s fact-finding committee looking into IPL’s financial skulduggery asking how cheerleaders help cricket.

The World Cup’s new format will ensure there are more meaningless matches played than in any edition before this.

Forty-two out of the 49 matches will be played, basically, to eliminate Ireland, Netherlands, Kenya, Canada and two more sides from the competition (what odds that those will be Zimbabwe and Bangladesh?).

The last World Cup felt so long that jokes were cracked about whether it was still going on.

And, despite being a few games and a days shorter than that one, the 2011 edition might seem even longer. The stadiums should fill up – this is India, after all but will anybody really care what happens?