Yeah, you don’t need to be a genius to figure this one out. And yes, there have been several articles written on this already. But what the hell, one more doesn’t hurt.

The FIFA Football World Cup lasts about four weeks. It involves 32 teams divided into eight groups. From almost all the continents. By comparison, the current cricket world cup took about seven weeks and had half the number of teams. The one obvious difference is the length of the games. A football game lasts ninety minutes plus stoppage time. In the knock-out stages you get the odd game with extra time and penalty shootouts but the game still gets over in less time than one innings in a typical game of cricket. This allows FIFA to schedule several matches in a day. They have four or more games per day with a pair of games kicking off together. So you have two time slots with two games per slot. With this system in place, the group stages get over in a hurry even if they occupy a large section of the tournament. With cricket, it’s just not possible. Each game takes 8 hours to complete and as such, organizers are unwilling to stage more than two games in a day. How will you show these games? It’s not like you can start late and get away with it. If the games aren’t shown live, sponsors won’t pay the organizers anything. What can they do? Selective broadcasting. If you have more than two games a day, show country-specific games. For example, if India play Pakistan, give the game priority for Indian and Pakistani viewers. Show other games if you have other stations available or as highlights packages. Hell, they went down to a game a day for the Super 8s!

You get down to sixteen teams and from then on, it’s a knock-out format all the way up to the final for football. I think this is where the cricket world cup is screwing up. Instead of moving straight to a knock-out format from the group stages, they go to another group stage. They call it the Super Sixes or the Super Eights or whatever but we all know these are less than super. With confusing rules and points carrying over from the group stages, the Super whatevers ruin the party. To make things worse, circumstances allowed Kenya to get to the semi-final last time around. This time, Bangladesh and Ireland made it through although India and Pakistan were not up to scratch this year. If the organizers are still wondering why no one was coming to watch the games, look no further than India and Pakistan bowing out after three games each.

One way to fix this is to reduce the number of overs in one-day cricket. To be honest, I no longer sit 8 hours watching a game. I used to but it ends up being a colossal waste of time. Cut back down to twenty or thirty overs and have a bunch of games everyday in a world cup. With shorter games, the crowd is more likely to be entertained. You know how they’re going to have a Twenty20 World Cup? Yeah? Make that the main event and scrap the current format.

With each team playing up to seven games in the Super stage, it’s no wonder that the WC was long. So for a team to go all the way, it meant playing 3+7+2 = 12 games. Over seven weeks, that’s not much. But imagine if we cut out the Super stage and instead go with a knock-out format after the group stages. The top eight teams would then play in the quarter-finals (4×2). Winners move to the semis (2×2). Those winners play the final. So you have 4+2+1 = 7 games in total after the group stages! This WC would be over in a reasonable amount of time. How they organize the groups and decide on the quarter-finalists is up to them. You can have two groups sending four teams each. Or four groups sending two teams each. WC 96 anyone? India-Pak quarter-final? In a high-pressure situation, we saw a fantastic game of cricket. Tempers flared, bowlers took a beating, and India finally claimed victory after Pakistan had started well. “Do-or-die” situations usually produce good games.

Of course, the ICC is going to take the lessons from this world cup and ruin the next edition as well. I lost interest this year after India went out. But one contributing factor to the lack of interest was the utter lack of good games. The Australians have now won 29 of their last 29 WC games. It’s a streak that has seen them lift three world cups in a row. Seriously, cricket is slowly turning into a boring spectacle. The Aussie juggernaut shows no sign of slowing down and the ICC needs to evaluate what’s happening with other teams in world cricket. Why did England, who beat the Aussies in their own backyard earlier this year, not even manage a semi-final spot? Why do the South Africans continue to flounder in big tournaments when it counts? And what happened to Bob Woolmer?