Cricket: Not a level playing field.
It took four days for the first competitive match to happen at the 2019 ICC Cricket World Cup when Bangladesh beat South Africa by 21 runs in a high scoring match at the Oval in London, England.
In the 3 days before that, the following results happened:
- Hosts England thrashed South Africa in their opening match by 104 runs at the Oval in London.
- West Indies decimated Pakistan for 105 at Trent Bridge, a ground which had hosted the highest score in men’s ODI cricket (481/6 by England), before going on to win by 7 wickets with 36.2 overs to spare.
- New Zealand took advantage of a green pitch and highly favorable bowling conditions to bowl Sri Lanka out for 136 before chasing it down without losing a single wicket at Sophia Gardens in Cardiff, Wales.
- Defending champions Australia comfortably chased down 207 against Afghanistan with 91 balls to spare in their innings at Bristol.
The format for this year’s World Cup was 10 teams playing each other once with the top 4 teams progressing to the semi-finals. In theory, this should mean more competitive matches. In reality, limiting the World Cup to just 10 teams (in a sport where there are 105 registered nations, of which only 16 have One Day International status) reduces the chances of a genuinely competitive tournament irrespective of the teams that play.
In a more restrictive move, the top 8 teams in the ICC men’s ODI rankings would automatically qualify for the World Cup, leaving only 2 spots available for the top 2 teams at an ICC Cricket World Cup Qualifier event. The move also meant that 2 Full Member nations (ICC members who can play Test cricket) out of 12 would be missing from the World Cup.
There is nothing wrong with having to qualify for the World Cup; it happens all the time with the FIFA World Cup and the concept of qualifying forces teams to play to the best of their ability, knowing that a loss could mean an end to their hopes of playing at the premier international event that the sport has to offer.
However, when there are only 2 spots to qualify for after the top 8 ranked teams have qualified, then there is something wrong with the balance of power in the sport. Especially when money is involved.
The economic perspective behind the International Cricket Council (ICC)’s move to restrict the Cricket World Cup to 10 teams was that it meant 9 guaranteed games for India, the center of the cricket universe.
India’s importance to cricket cannot be understated; it is the largest audience to the sport and commands significant broadcast revenue potential, a fact that the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) are acutely aware of and use to their advantage regularly to get their own way.
An ideal example of them flaunting their power would be in restructuring the 2010/11 home series against Australia on short notice. Originally meant to be a series of ODI matches, the BCCI added 2 test matches to help India maintain their no.1 ranking in Test cricket, creating confusion and stress among the touring Australian players as it clashed with domestic Twenty20 league commitments.
Back during the 2007 Cricket World Cup, when India and Pakistan were knocked out in the first round, it meant that a matchup that would have sent broadcast revenue through the roof was replaced by a less exciting match between Bangladesh and Ireland, the latter of whom had memorably eliminated Pakistan on St. Patrick’s Day that year. The BCCI’s response to that early elimination was to lobby for a format that guaranteed more matches for India, resulting in a 14 team World Cup in 2011 where teams were split into 2 groups of 7 to guarantee a minimum of 6 games each.
The 2011 format was used for the World Cup in 2015, but in between the BCCI had decided to assert it’s importance to the game by claiming the lion’s share of revenue distribution from the ICC in a major shakeup, receiving $440 million under the ‘Big Three’ model where India, England, and Australia had a larger share than the other playing nations.
When that model was rolled back in 2017 and with it reducing the BCCI’s share to $293.1 million, the BCCI retaliated by threatening to withdraw from the Members Participation Agreement (MPA) that governed their participation in global events until 2023 and to withdraw the men’s cricket team from the 2017 ICC Champions Trophy, and with it render the ongoing broadcast deal with Star worth $2 billion practically useless. Withdrawal from the MPA would have meant that India would not participate in any global ICC event (men’s cricket or women’s cricket) until 2023.
The BCCI eventually managed to secure $405 million in revenue distribution from the ICC, but the entire episode made it clear that as the biggest nation in the sport, the BCCI (alongside Cricket Australia and the England and Wales Cricket Board) had the clout to carve up the distribution model as it saw fit and its inability to accept a reduction to the amount they felt they were entitled to saw them nearly throw the sport into ruin over bruised egos. It’s fair to say that no team would want to play against India if it meant losing out on the substantial broadcast revenue that came with playing India.
The economic imbalance caused by India’s large share, alongside that of England and Australia’s share also affects the number of games that each team plays, which in turn affects their chances of qualification for major ICC events. Between the last World Cup final on 29 March 2015 and 30 September 2017, the cutoff date for automatic qualification to the 2019 World Cup, this was the ODI playing record of the teams that had automatically qualified (among the 12 test playing nations):
West Indies and Afghanistan did not place in the top 8 ranked teams by the cutoff date and had to qualify for the World Cup by virtue of being the top 2 teams at the 2018 ICC Cricket World Cup Qualifier. Ireland and Zimbabwe, the other 2 test playing nations, were eliminated in that Qualifier.
It’s unrealistic to expect all teams to play the same number of matches; lucrative broadcasting rights mean that only the most profitable matchups will be hosted, with the occasional series which registers a loss for broadcasters. A series between India and Pakistan, one of the most lucrative broadcasting opportunities in the sport, does not appear likely to happen again anytime soon given tensions between the two governments and prevailing jingoistic sentiments.
But if teams are playing an unequal number of matches, their chances of qualification are equally affected. There are more complex issues that explain how each team performs — inconsistent selection in Sri Lanka’s case and unavailability of the best players to West Indies — but setting a minimum number of matches for each team to play before deciding qualification would go towards establishing a level playing field than what was already seen above.
The ICC, to their credit, have gone ahead with implementing an ODI league to add more context to World Cup qualification. Titled the ICC Cricket World Cup Super League, it is set to run from 1 May 2020 to 31 March 2022, ending one year before the next World Cup to be hosted by India in 2023. India qualified by virtue of hosting the next tournament, leaving 9 spots up for grabs.
13 teams are set to take part over 156 matches under the following conditions:
- Each team plays 8 series in total — 4 home and 4 away, and each against a different team.
- Each series consists of 3 ODI matches, making for a total of 12 games at home and 12 games away for each team.
- At the end of the league, the top 7 ranked teams (and India) automatically qualify for the 2023 World Cup, with the last 5 playing in a Qualifier tournament to decide the last 2 spots.
It gives each team 24 matches and a fairer chance at qualification for each of the 13 teams involved. Teams will still play series against each other outside the league system, but only these matches will count towards the World Cup.
It follows the league system that will be implemented for Test cricket and Twenty20 cricket as well.
It is a step in the right direction, but it would be a fairer system if there were more places open to qualification after the top teams had automatically qualified. For instance, it would make for a more interesting and competitive tournament if only 6 spots (the host team and the top 5 teams) were decided by automatic qualification, while the remaining 4 spots were then decided in the Qualifier tournament. It would mean that there would be a mix of different teams at the World Cup and would provide more impetus to teams trying to appear at the World Cup for the first time.
Cricket as a sport is an interesting ecosystem — it must juggle 3 formats of international cricket in ODIs, Test cricket and Twenty20 Internationals, and various Twenty20 leagues across the world. With more money available to players in Twenty20 leagues than in international cricket, the 3 formats must be given some context at the international level to give players a reason to continue playing at the international level. Adding context to ODI cricket in the form of a league dedicated to qualification helps address that, but more must be done to ensure a more open and competitive World Cup, especially in an era where premier events in other sports are expanding.
All monetary figures expressed in this article are denominated in USD.
