A case for the 'minnows'

After 15 matches of the World Cup so far, some of which have been entirely uncompetitive, we got arguably the most exciting and certainly the closest contest yesterday. It didn't involve any of the 'big boys', rather featured two so-called minnows – Ireland and United Arab Emirates. The irony is this edition could be the last chance for these teams to showcase their worth to the world audience. Why? Simply because the International Cricket Council (ICC) doesn't think these teams are competitive enough.

A look at the results of the 15 completed matches so far will give us an idea about the warped notion of ICC's reasoning.

Out of the eight completed matches between full-member nations, the closest contest (in terms of margin of victory) has been the 62-run win for South Africa against Zimbabwe. Three of the others resulted in 100-plus run victories while one was a thumping eight-wicket victory.

At the opposite end of the spectrum, the first encounter between two associate members was yesterday's one and we all know how competitive and exciting it turned out to be. However, what comes as a direct rebuttal to ICC's stance is that out of the five contests between associates and full members, the associates have won one and gave their big brothers a run for their money on three other occasions.

Now the pretext behind ICC's decision to trim the number of participants from 14 to 10 is that the group stages in the current format involve too many matches for the 'minnows', which is not a hit with the audience, television viewers and sponsors.

However, what the ICC does not seem to realise is that it is not the number of teams rather the length and format that is making this tournament less attractive. The decision to trim the number of associates also goes against ICC's initiative of spreading the game in the mid '90s.

While the ICC increased the number of teams over the last two decades, introducing more associates and helping the game flourish in those countries, it also introduced some apparently unnecessary 'super sixes' and 'super eights' stages to the tournament, stretching a prim one-month tournament to a tiring one-and-a-half-month affair.

The 2007 tournament, which featured 16 teams and four groups of four in the group stages, was perhaps the most logical and attractive format – barring the super eights -- considering that it catered to a wider range of teams while at the same time minimising the number of group stage matches. However, that format didn't fit the bill of ICC because it didn't provide enough insurance for the big teams of progressing from the group stages. India and Pakistan, two of the most followed teams in the world – did not prove to be competitive enough on an odd day or two and were eliminated from the group stages and that reportedly cost the ICC a big fortune. That experience made the game's governing body to shelf the idea of four groups of four teams each, and planning a wield of the axe on the associates.

But should cricket's showpiece event be designed to give indemnity to particular teams just because it would be financially more lucrative? If that is the case, then the idea of fair competition is ruled out in the first place.