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| Undeserving but lucky same goes for other minnow teams. |
Cricket World Cup 2011 features 14 teams with 4 teams which are completely 'minnows' and are not at all capable of causing an upset at least in this edition. The teams are - Canada, Zimbabwe, Kenya and Netherlands. They are just a burden for the World Cup. They just help in one thing i.e increasing the number of fixtures resulting in a 'long' world cup which actually is not a help. According to me, these teams should not have been given the chance to feature in this World Cup.
Canada and Kenya were thrashed badly in their respective first game and that was just a start, more brutal thrashing is yet to come. 10 teams would have been good. We could have witnessed a more interesting and more competitive World Cup if only Top 10 Teams would have been playing in the Cup. But still these teams can be a big help for the big guns and they can improve not only on their points but also the NRRs.
Feb 19 - Apr 2 is a very long duration for a highly intense competition like the World Cup. It is good to see the sport being highly promoted in the countries like Canada and Netherlands and many other European countries but they should be provided with better competitions with countries of same calibre. More competitions for these associate countries should be held so that they can improve their cricket and some day be able to compete nicely against the 'Test Playing' Nations. They don't deserve to play in the World Cup with this kind of status.
I will be surprised if any of the teams mentioned can cause an upset but Cricket is the game of uncertainties and anything is possible but practically it looks impossible at least in this 10th edition of the Premier Tournament of Cricket.
Since CT is being treated as a niche competition - I would be happier if WC remained at say 12 (or 16) teams and CT became limited to top six teams.
ReplyDeleteT20, however, should be expanded to include the world...maybe 60 teams to start with being whittled down to 24 or so by the time the T20 WC happens via regional qualifiers or something like that.
50-50 WC should retain the world quality for there are reams which have pure ODI status...what does one do with them then? CT should go down to top six teams. No point overlapping tournaments.