Here’s a link for those still in the dark about the Cricket world Cup in its ‘Frankenstein 2007′ avatar (like I was, until Pratik pointed out commenting in a World Cup post). It looks a rather grotesque format if you ask me, straining for foolproof qualities and compromising the essential brevity of a quadrennial showpiece in the process. Mutual isolation of the host countries in the Caribbean only lengthens the DNA strand like structure of the tourney.

Think of it - the tournament lasts from March 11 to April 28……ONE AND A HALF MONTHS! ICC may as well have “Who awakes wins” on their logo. Seriously hope all the teams are allowed 16 man squads instead of the customary 14. (Hotels permitting, of course - learnt that there’ll be acute shortage of those;) The last thing we want is a final where a limping and sea sick Pakistan team struggle to put up 200 on a belter and some half-dead Indians struggle to chase it.

As for the Frankenstein part, I see some calculations of maximising revenue losing any sense of proportion and can only pray that the apex competition in the game does not achieve the opposite of its basic aim of popularising the game beyond its present bounds. The 2003 edition of the Cup was not too successful in that respect, if we forget the ICC coffers for a moment.

There are people that watch cricket once every four years, and they are potential entrants to the fascinating world of cricket. A showpiece event should ideally get them hooked on to the game for life. Instead they were virtually shooed away by a million inconsequential (mis)matches that had to be endured during World Cup 2003 before the real action started - and ended very soon after.

Maybe enlightenment will dawn upon ICC some day of this auspicious millennium and they will be able to see that the world Cup is not exactly the stage where cricket lovers around the world would love to see fledgling sides learn their trade. Or do we can get a tad more melodramatic and send the ICC bosses a DVD of the Indian film Anand where the terminally ill protagonist asks his friend to ‘have a great life instead of a long one’?To be fair to them, the organisers have tried to take stock of past mistakes. Dividing the 16 teams in four initial groups instead of the usual two is the first step the 2007 World Cup rulemakers have taken to curtail those ‘promotion games’ (cannot find any other words for those matches after the soccer world cup where even the 32nd ranked team looks consistently capable of causing an upset).   

But in the process the Cup gets an overly long ‘Super 8′ phase that worries me no end. 24 more matches will be played during this phase, after the 24-match group league, and then only are we allowed to enter knock-out teritory. Hope you’re still reading….

There can be a bright side to all this though - surprisingly that very Super 8 phase! The round actually offers the cricket world a rare chance to compare the real strengths of so many leading cricket nations in the one day format while playing against each other. I mean, if it reaches full potential then even the semis and the final may pale in comparison to that cricket feast. Reminds of the mini world cup of 1985, this Super 8.

So this monster of a World Cup too can potentially end up as another lovable guy for no fault of it. Let us hope that it saves the face of its Dr. Frankenstein, cricket.