World Cup The Next One

[Aislabie]

One part of the issue "In Focus"

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With this World Cup nearly over, it's probably an appropriate time to start talking about the next one, and, amongst other things, the controversial format and the shutting out of the Associates.

Other things which are regularly mentioned are big bats, small boundaries, flat wickets and fielding restrictions, and the fact that all of them lead to the kind of excessive scoring that we've seen in 2015.

What would you propose for the next World Cup, and for ODI cricket generally?

 

[Skater]

16 teams - Ireland and Afghanistan certainly made a big contribution to this World Cup. With the idea I had in another thread to make sure the associates play more ODIs against top nations, the quality should improve and teams that were let-downs in this tournament (Scotland and UAE) should make more of an impact.

Four groups of four teams. As you'd expect, everyone plays each other once. The top two in each group go through to the quarter finals, and the rest of the tournament takes its familiar knockout route. With 24 group stage matches, the whole number of games in the tournament will drop to just 31. There would be two group games per day - on day one it would be one from Group A and one from Group B, day two one from Group C and one from Group D, and so on, following this pattern to the end of the group stages. After a single rest day, the quarter finals would follow on consecutive days. Another rest day, then the semis, and after one more rest day, the final at Lord's. With this schedule the whole tournament will be an exciting 22 days long. It wouldn't feel like it was dragging on and there would be the proper festival feeling that the cricket World Cup should be.

So that's my proposal for the format - 16 teams, 4 groups, knockouts, all done in 22 days.

Difficult to know what to do about the rules and regulations. If you change one, you're going to cause issues elsewhere. One thing I would like to see though (much sooner than 2019 mind) is that if a review is called for and the decision stands, but only on the basis of Umpire's Call, that the team who reviewed should not lose the review. Let the decision stand, but let them keep the review.

 

[ParkedTheBus]

Resharing what I posted on the WC General Discussion thread

Just my two cents: Why not a 12 team World Cup with the top 8 teams + 4 teams from a qualification tournament of sorts between Zimbabwe, Bangladesh and the top 5 associates in a league format? The 12 teams can then be divided into 3 groups of 4 or 2 groups of 6 with 6 teams progressing to the super 6s stage from where: (a) the top two teams qualify for finals or (b) the top four qualify for semis? True, it might be a tad longer than usual, but in the present format all a team needs is three lucky days to win the cup after progressing from the group stages.

 

[ethybubs]

I would actually rather see a 200 team world cup than 10, give everyone a go and see how they stack up.

 

[MattW]

Why not a 12 team World Cup with the top 8 teams + 4 teams from a qualification tournament of sorts between Zimbabwe, Bangladesh and the top 5 associates in a league format?

Why should Bangladesh need to qualify for the next World Cup when they've made the quarter finals in this one?

New Zealand, who have a very good chance of winning this tournament - were ranked 9th at the point when the qualifications were decided and England were ranked first. That alone should show that using the ODI rankings to decide who qualifies is a terrible idea.

Obviously you're not going to send the hosts to a qualification tournament - unless you integrate it with the main tournament and have the farce where Bangladesh had to qualify for the World T20 they were hosting.

Indeed they are made worse by the ICC arbitrarily cutting teams off the ODI ranking table - leaving Ireland and Afghanistan the only associate teams on it. Scotland, the UAE, Hong Kong and PNG, have ODI status but aren't on the ranking table, so don't even have the chance to push up into a Top 8.

You find out the best team in the world by having a tournament involving the world, not trying to second guess that before the start of the tournament.

The only reason we have to keep debating World Cup formats is the utter paranoia about India or Pakistan not being good enough to get through the group stage.

This World Cup has proven that you can have the tension, the drama, the buzz, the crowd, the atmosphere, with associate teams. Let them play.

Here's my World Cup format:

- 16 teams in 4 groups of 4
- The top 2 teams, and the winner of playoffs between the third placed finishers in the groups - for a total of 10 teams.
- The 10 teams are put on a combined points table - the top 2 teams skip the first elimination round.
- The other 8 teams play knockouts 3 vs 10, 4 vs 9, etc.
- The winning 4 teams, plus the top 2 teams play - 1 vs 6, 2 vs 5 - etc.
- The winning 3 teams and the closest loser move through - top ranked team plays that loser, and 2 v 3
- Winner of those matches makes the final.

Despite being a little bit complicated - it only adds 3 matches to the finals compared to this World Cup, gives a benefit to the best teams in the group stage and gives a double chance to one team in the top 6. That combined with the second chance for the third placed group finishers, you hopefully can be confident India and Pakistan can make it through.

The 16 teams would be the 16 teams with ODI status - which means that the World Cricket League would be the qualification tournament for associates.

Difficult to know what to do about the rules and regulations. If you change one, you're going to cause issues elsewhere. One thing I would like to see though (much sooner than 2019 mind) is that if a review is called for and the decision stands, but only on the basis of Umpire's Call, that the team who reviewed should not lose the review. Let the decision stand, but let them keep the review.

This. So much of this.

I'd also make a minor change - make the fielding circle 30 metres, not 30 yards. And require that the ropes not be more than 2 metres from the boundary fence.

 

[IceAgeComing]

16 teams, four groups of four is a must. I'd personally make all the teams qualify and not just associates since that's how it works in most world cups and it would give you a reason to have ODIs between Full Members and Associates; but I'll admit that the international schedule is probably a little crowded for that. The WCL is the next best solution IMO: the qualifying system for this World Cup in relation to the associates seemed to work fine although I never understood the point of the WCL Championship thing...

make the fielding circle 30 metres, not 30 yards.

i'm sorry, the mcc refuse to use any of those nasty modern foreign measurements

 

[Aislabie]

Personally, I'd suggest a 16-team or 20-team format. For this World Cup, that would have led to something like this:

Sixteen teams

Group A|Group B|Group C|Group D
ENG| RSA| IND| AUS
BAN| WIN| PAK| SRL
NZL| ZIM| IRE| AFG
PNG| HKG| UAE| SCO

Twenty teams (maybe more of a WT20 thing)

CAN| NED| NAM| KEN

There aren't a huge amount of insane mis-matches there - obviously more so if you include four more teams, which might be more of a long term option - but four groups and knockouts would be a must. I would have the quarter-finalists automatically qualify for the next tournament, which dramatically rewards an Associate (or a side which like Bangladesh or Zimbabwe) which has a good run, whilst ensuring that crappy Full Members like England have to prove that they're competent. Qualifying shouldn't stretch them, but it should be a wake-up call for them.

Those would also be the eight who make up the Champions Trophy:

Possible Champions Trophy groups

Group A|Group B
AUS| NZL
IND| RSA
PAK| SRL
WIN| BAN

In order to get more Associates playing quality opposition between World Cups, I would mandate it that all bi-lateral ODI series have to invite an Associate to act as the third wheel in a tri-series. I would also open up ODI status so that teams like Canada, Kenya, Namibia, Nepal, Netherlands, etc. do not get forgotten about, which is too much the case at the minute.

 

[Earagav]

Possible Champions Trophy groups

England?

 

[Aislabie]

England?

Failed to finish in the top eight of the World Cup, and therefore don't really deserve to make the Champions Trophy

 

[grkrama]

You find out the best team in the world by having a tournament involving the world, not trying to second guess that before the start of the tournament.

Gold matt, quote of the day

 

[grkrama]

im more interested to see if we will make cricket part of olympics even is its t20 shoul give a good idea of the counties that participate outside known commodity also to see a tournament structured and organised outside clutches of icc

 

[IceAgeComing]

Failed to finish in the top eight of the World Cup, and therefore don't really deserve to make the Champions Trophy

The thing's being hosted in England though; I'd imagine that regardless of the format there'd be a "hosts always qualify" rule. It'd be dumb if they didn't...

 

[icyman]

The 10-team World Cup I fear is gonna be a replica of the one we had in the West Indies. The Super 8 stage was a long drawn out boring one and people were literally waiting for it to get over.

I like quite a few suggestions mentioned above, especially with the 16 team Cup and groups of 4 each. However, the likelihood of that happening for 2019 is very minimal.

1. Full Members:
Not all full members can qualify directly. Ideally the ICC ought to have had the 2015 quarter-finalists getting direct entry. However, that cannot be done as the host nation itself has not qualified. Instead of the Top 8, the cutoff needs to be for the Top 6 as this may throw up some surprises.

2. Qualification:
Let us assume that the Top 6 teams are: Australia, NZ, India,Sri Lanka & South Africa. England goes through by virtue of being the host. The remaining members like Pak, WIN, ZIM, Bangla will then need to fight it out with 4 more Associates for the final places

3. Format:

Option 1:
2 groups of 5 teams each.
Round Robin Matches
The top 2 teams from each group contest the semi-final

Option 2:
10 team round robin league matches like in 1992
Top 2 teams face-off in a play-off ,winner going through to the final
Loser of the first play-off takes on the winner of T3 & T4

 

[Biggs]

The fear that India won't qualify for Quarters and Semis because of sponsorships and TV revenue is the only reason why the the ICC is doing everything bar just allowing them to play in the Semi regardless of results.

The "ranking" system is a joke and should not be the basis for ANYTHING let alone who gets to play in a World Cup.

With the advent of DigitalTV there's no reason to not be playing multiple games at the same time especially with the dual hosts system, have 2 matches each day during the week and 3 a day on weekends.

It's more work for the groundsmen but that's their job and making more use of drop-in pitch technology goes a long way.

It's A WORLD cup, save the champions trophy nonsense for teams that have to qualify if you want, that thing is pretty irrelevant with the T20 World Cup taking over these days.

This years format is solid, easily the best World Cup for a few years now and schedules have been fair. Just increase the per-day games you're playing in the pool stages.

 

[MattW]

Even if you accept 10 teams, two pools of 5 with a top 4 would at least make things interesting. A top 2 that goes straight into semi-finals would make it quite competitive - but it's been shown that avoiding the risk of unexpected knockouts is to come at the expense of tension.

Wasn't the basis for all this experimentation that the 2007 format's Super 8 stage was too long?