Leading Edge: Cricket is too small and stuck up to hold a World Cup

Sunday Times

TELFORD VICE, Sydney

AFGHANISTAN won a game at the World Cup. OK, so they beat Scotland, which is even easier than beating the Scots’ football team - who at No. 38 in the FIFA rankings are just 18 places above Bafana. And if you are pegged anywhere near Bafana, man, do you have problems.

Beating Scotland at cricket is closer to managing not to trip over your own feet than it is to dancing the tango. But, hey, it’s Afghanistan’s first trip to the tournament and he or she who begrudges these bombed, besieged, beaten people something so sweet and innocent as victory in a game of cricket is a heartless husk of a human being.

So, how much was made of this joyous occasion, this reason to be giddily cheerful, no matter who you were and which team you supported? Yes, even if you’re Scottish.

It was in there somewhere, between the cocaine scandal in the National Rugby League that has been front and back page news here for too many days, the fuss over cruelty to rabbits and rats and other assorted small animals in the training of greyhounds for racing, the build-up to the Aussie Rules season, all flavours of football, and, of course, the boring blather of some or other captain or coach or suited or tracksuited flunkie associated with the World Cup.

Perhaps because the tournament is still getting out of bed or because the biggest games are too few and far between, the World Cup has not caught fire in the public imagination. At least, not in Australia. In New Zealand, where Brendon McCullum’s team are playing with the verve and ruthlessness more often seen from the All Blacks, the sparks have grown into widespread smouldering.

But, of the 13 matches played in the first seven days at this World Cup, only those between England and Australia, India and Pakistan, New Zealand and England, and SA and India have drawn significant interest. That leaves 10 games that no-one except isolated pockets of fans care much about.

The fact that the game between the Aussies and Bangladesh last weekend was washed out means that, before yesterday’s showdown with the Kiwis, the major local drawcards had played one match in 14 days.

That is too few by at least half in a country that has cokeheads at loosehead and live greyhound bait to fuel its daily obsession with all things sport.

And yet, the International Cricket Council (ICC) has done so much so well. The organisation of this World Cup is better than any since at least 1999. You can’t go more than a few hundred metres in Australia or New Zealand without seeing tournament branding. Everything works and works well, and if it does not there is someone close at hand who will fix the problem before you know it exists. Many of these people are unpaid volunteers. Bless them.

The ICC should be deeply proud and satisfied of their World their Cup. That’s right; you really did read that here: well done, ICC.

But there is a hole in this bucket. It’s the one at the rim. Simply put, cricket is not football. To not be able to hear yourself think at a game between Ghana and Serbia at Loftus Versveld because of the thousands of vuvuzelas being blasted from all parts of a packed stadium during the 2010 World Cup was to understand that the only sport that should call its premier tournament the World Cup is played with feet and heads. Vuvuzelas! At Loftus! For Ghana and Serbia!

Cricket is too small and too stuck up to play on this stage. Good thing, perhaps, that 14 teams will become 10 in 2019. But, please, don’t call it the World Cup.