The Cricket World Cup is an enormous, sprawling event, involving 14 teams, some of whom will visit three different countries over a period of six weeks, during which a total of 49 matches will be played.
The tournament is divided into two groups of seven, with more than 85% of the whole event made up of group matches, although some cricket fans are unlikely to tune in to the tournament until the knock-out phase begins on March 23.
Though there were complaints aplenty at the length of the last CWC - a truly grim sporting contest which lacked spark, atmosphere and reasonably priced tickets - the qualifying group stages of the tenth World Cup are a deliberately long drawn-out affair thanks to broadcasters' largesse.
It’s perfectly possible there will be an upset, perhaps when Bangladesh take on the West Indies, or Zimbabwe face New Zealand, but in truth, no-one expects anything of prolonged significance.
Selecting the sides almost certain to make the quarter-finals looks a straight forward matter as the group stages are designed to ensure none of the ‘big eight’ are eliminated.
In other words, barring a sporting disaster, there’ll be no repeat of 2007 when India and Pakistan were both eliminated before the quarter-finals began.
Tournament director Ratnakar Shetty is clear that such a scenario cannot be allowed to happen again.
“Economically,” he said, “we all know that India is the financial powerhouse of cricket. The exit of India and Pakistan from the 2007 World Cup was a disaster for the tournament. The sponsors, broadcasters, tour operators, the West Indies board – all lost money.”
Officially, India are hosting the tournament with Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, but as 29 matches are played on Indian soil, the principal hosts have structured the tournament to ensure the ‘home’ side are most likely to appear in one of the two quarter-final games played on March 25 or 26.
Where India play will be determined by their finishing position in group B.
Sports fans have grown used to such contrived tournament structures.
Consider the Champions League, for example, where most group stages are effectively settled after four matches and where everything possible is done to keep teams from the same country apart until the latter stages.
Money is the driving force behind such artificial arrangements and the ICC have clearly picked up a trick or two from UEFA.
For a start, the ICC have sold the global CWC rights for an estimated $2 billion to ESPN Star Sports; every aspect of every match will be broadcast in 220 countries.
