Giants and minnows
LEVEL PLAYING FIELD
The Hindu, 8 April
IN a recent debate over the role of the minnows in the World Cup, BBC Radio’s chief cricket correspondent, Jonathan Agnew, argued that in order to ensure the greater public got to see what it most wanted to see (notably an India-Pakistan match) the minnows should be excluded from the tournament altogether. “The smaller teams, the associate countries, are not good enough, consistent enough, to make it worthwhile for them to be involved at this point”, he wrote. “The World Cup is the pinnacle of cricket and it should be the best possible shop window for the game”.
It’s an extraordinary argument. The teams designated the best are to be ring-fenced, offered immunity from upsets, just in case it turns out that they are not, or not always, the best.
The likelihood is that nine times out of 10 India will beat Bangladesh and Pakistan will beat Ireland even more frequently. But one of the joys of any cup competition is the do-or-die format, the potential for upsets and giant-killing, the possibility that, even if only for a day, the customary hierarchies of the game will be turned upside down.
Open competition, in which giants and minnows are on equal footing, is rare in cricket. Unlike FIFA, the football authority, in which all members are nominally equal, the ICC is by design unequal. The full members (the Test playing countries) are and always have been self-selecting and self-regulating; they decide whether and when an associate member is worthy to join their exclusive club, from which, to date, no member has ever been relegated (though Zimbabwe’s suspension from Test cricket comes close).
If claims for elite status are to be respected, they must be subject to periodic testing. This year, as it happens, two of the game’s great powers failed that test. It’s vital for the integrity of sport that the possibility of such untoward results remains open.
Sport’s unpredictability is its attractive power, the key to its hold on popular imagination, as well as to its value as a commodity. Yet those who invest in it as a commodity – broadcasters, sponsors, advertisers, rights holders, organisers, marketers, and bookies – share an interest in reducing the element of the unpredictable. The early eviction of India and Pakistan from the tournament is decried as a financial disaster for the game; so it’s suggested that we should re-jig the format to make sure it never happens again.
Irish fans find their team is in a no-win situation. By doing too well this time, they seem to have reduced their chances of taking part next time, at least if Agnew has his way.
In India and Pakistan, quick elimination from the World Cup should be a humbling experience: a salutary lesson in the fragility of our assumptions and the just-when-you-least-expect-it irony of sport. Sadly, it seems that for many it’s felt not as humbling but as humiliating, which is a very different emotion. Losing a game becomes a national disgrace, part of a collective tragic psychodrama. That attitude grotesquely over-states the importance of sport. It also reflects a failure to grasp the essential serendipity of sport, especially a sport like cricket, in which so many variables are at play.
So far, neither the teams, nor the weather, nor the fans have performed according to the expectations of World Cup planners. The rain, the disturbing death of Bob Woolmer, the poor form of India and Pakistan are events out of the control of the organisers. But over-pricing of seats and awkward access to grounds, which have resulted in small crowds, were the result of avoidable miscalculations.
Responsibility here lies only partly with the hosts; the ICC along with its broadcasting and commercial partners have been closely involved in every strategic decision. This World Cup was conceived from the first as a global commercial spectacle using the West Indies as an alluring backdrop. The compulsion to allocate seats in advance by selling as many as possible in multi-match packages, the priority given to corporate hospitality, the policing of grounds to exclude “ambush marketing” by “unofficial” soft drinks or mobile phones, all are attempts to control the spectacle, and thereby maximise return on investment. In this context it’s perverse to complain that what’s missing from this World Cup is the spontaneity associated with Caribbean cricket culture. The Carnival spirit is about reversing customary roles, upending social order. When it actually happens on the cricket field – Bangladesh beats India, Ireland beats Pakistan – the organisers, and much of the media, are aghast.
Nearly all societies take sport too seriously. The British media’s treatment of the English footballers after their poor performances against lowly Israel and Andorra was every bit as lacerating and vindictive as the Indian response to the cricketers’ failure in the Caribbean. As in India, what emerges on these unhappy occasions is a disparity between the idea of the team – and of the nation it is said to represent – and the reality. The media, which is most responsible for inflating the team and the importance of the event, then revels in the ensuing deflation.
That the heroes-to-zeroes scenario is a favourite of the sports media in South Asia, Europe and North America alike suggests that it’s not a matter of national cultures but of global economics. As a result of the IT and media revolutions, sport attracts and generates increasingly vast sums of money, and commands an ever larger slice of public attention. That, in turn, leads to heightened efforts to shape the spectacle to suit the biggest investors. But, as recent events have demonstrated, sport remains unpredictable, retains its capacity to surprise, to disturb even the best-laid plans of marketers and media-barons.
