For a couple of months during early 1996 the Cola Wars dribbled across India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. With Coke as an official sponsor of the cricket World Cup, Pepsi launched an aggressive marketing campaign. This included flying branded barrage balloons just outside, but in full view of, the grounds and innumerable television inserts that featured half-a-dozen or so predominantly Asian big names, Mohammad Azharuddin among them, extolling the merits of their product.
As a result of this, the deals struck between the International Cricket Council (ICC), the World Sports Groups and a variety of sponsors, including Pepsi, for a number of events and tournaments, among them next year’s World Cup and the ICC Trophy tournament that started in Sri Lanka on Thursday, sought to guarantee sponsors a remarkable degree of exclusivity. And this was behind the ”ambush marketing” clause that provoked the stand-off between players and administrators leading up to Sri Lanka.
Pepsi, obviously, will be one of the main beneficiaries of this exclusivity. Not as much a case of poacher turned gamekeeper as murderer turned hangman. Somewhere in all this lie the seeds of a debate concerned with the ethics of cricket and marketing, but you, no doubt, will draw your own conclusions.
In any event, the ICC Trophy starts for South Africa against the West Indies on Friday. The winners of this match have only to beat Kenya in their remaining match to qualify for the semifinals.
On the evidence of their most recent meetings, coupled with the fact that the West Indies appear to have completely lost the ability to travel anywhere, it would be a major upset should South Africa miss out on the semifinals.
The other three groups are more interesting. South Africa are drawn to meet England, India or Zimbabwe in the semis and, now that India have a full-strength squad, it’s hard to bet against them. This tournament is likely to prove an unreliable guide to next year’s World Cup simply because the conditions in Sri Lanka are so vastly different from those in South Africa, and while India probably don’t have the bowlers to win in South Africa, they do have the batsmen to win in Sri Lanka.
In the other half of the draw, Australia and New Zealand find themselves in Pool One with Bangladesh. New Zealand are the holders of the trophy, won against expectations in Nairobi two years ago.
As things stand at the moment, Australia are favourites for the World Cup, but New Zealand do have cricket’s outstanding international captain in Stephen Fleming. They also worked out a method of beating Australia last summer.
The hosts, Sri Lanka, still have their inspirational captain Sanath Jayasuriya for this tournament despite the dislocated shoulder suffered during last month’s Morocco Cup final against South Africa.
They also possess a formidable one-day record — and Muttiah Muralitharan — and they start as favourites for the tournament. Which would mean, of course, that Pakistan, who share the group along with The Netherlands, might have to go home after just two pool matches.
No one is quite sure what to make of Pakistan. They were poor in Morocco and worse still in Kenya a couple of weeks later. An interesting statistic to emerge from Nairobi is that Inzamam-ul-Haq did not field a single ball during the tournament.
Look at India and Sri Lanka as finalists; don’t be surprised if South Africa and Australia fail to make the last stage; and don’t place any bets for the World Cup on the evidence of what happens in Colombo.