Kevin Mitchell hopes that the the organisers of the next tournament, in the Caribbean in 2007, don’t make the same mistakes as Ali Bacher
So, next stop Disneyland. After the dark hilarity of botched politics, naked compromise, rain and numerical dyslexia contributing in some part to the
elimination of some of the best teams from this World Cup, the organisers must
hope the next tournament does not turn into another Mickey Mouse affair.
There can be little argument that the absence of England, West Indies and South
Africa — and, to a lesser extent, Pakistan — at the expense of Zimbabwe and
Kenya has delegitimised the 2003 World Cup. If that sounds harsh on the minnows,
look at the scores and performances in the Super Six stage.
Some will say the major players had their fate in their own hands and, for a
large part, that is true if you are genuinely good enough, you should go through
on your ability. But there is no accounting, in cricketing terms, for points
being shared for rained-out games with the sun shining brightly the following
day, as was the case with West Indies and Bangladesh, then, cruelly for England,
Zimbabwe and Pakistan.
Boycotts — right or wrong — were another glitch. As Nasser Hussain said, the
International Cricket Council, the national governing bodies and the tournament
organ isers should have seen these political storms coming a year ago.
In a tournament of such stature that stretches from February 8 to March 23, such
a coming together of fiascos is unacceptable to most fair-thinking people.
Arguments by Ali Bacher, whose baby it is, that it was logistically impossible
to incorporate reserve days in the qualifying matches don’t wash. This is a man
who was happy to announce on the eve of the Super Sixes that the tournament had
already exceeded all financial expectations — an income of R80-million revenue against a projected R25-million — yet the host broadcaster could only afford four television units at any one time to cover the opening matches. They cut corners and they paid for it.
Bacher, executive director of World Cup 2003, said: ”We have demonstrated that
South Africa has the resources and infrastructure to host a global sporting
event and I’m confident that the public support will continue, even though South
Africa is out of the tournament.”
That’s all right then. The committee has satisfied its ego in front of an international audience. This is the way of all such world jamborees, since big business determined priorities for the organisers and politicians. They are so far removed from their sport they fail to comprehend the disappointment of those supporters poorly served by a structure that is unable to deliver fair results.
You can’t have it all ways. That Bacher prefers to measure success in rand rather than runs and wickets is instructive. This has been a marketing exercise, and a hugely successful one, but it has been a botched cricketing tournament. South Africa, beaten on their merits by West Indies in the first match and by Duckworth-Lewis when they played New Zealand, could only blame themselves for not being able to count up to 230 against Sri Lanka.
Yet it is particularly sad for South Africa to be eliminated, whatever their coach’s inability to read a Duckworth-Lewis run-rate sheet or their captain’s inflexibility in the field. They are a better team than even their disillusioned supporters now think, but they failed to come together. And this has given the opponents of transformation (the euphemism used for black quotas) a stick with which to beat Percy Sonn and his associates at the United Cricket Board of South Africa.
We will see a ripple of reaction to the new order when South Africa tour England this summer, with a couple of the older players rumoured to be bailing out in favour of earning some sterling in the county championship. But, if some of the good people involved in the changing of South African sport do not lose heart, the cricket team will overcome these problems in the long run.
Because, if there was one theme that ran strongly through the World Cup, it was that cricket has come to represent more than the sporting ambitions of nations. It is about pride and development. You could see the joy in the eyes of the aged Kenyans, and the disappointment that enveloped England after coming so close to
beating Australia then having to watch the rain in Bulawayo ease Zimbabwe through to the Super Six, a spot that would have belonged to Hussain’s men had they not decided to boycott Zimbabwe on moral and security grounds.
What the organisers have to avoid now is a repetition of the structural cock-ups in the Caribbean, and plans for the game to be exported to the American mainland has expediency written all over it.
If, as expected, they do play a couple of matches of the West Indies World Cup in the United States (where it has famously been derided as baseball on valium), they will at least not be accused of a lack of ambition. Florida is closer geographically than spiritually to the Caribbean, whatever the rise in recent years of basketball’s popularity in the West Indies, and Chris Dehring, for one, thinks the game will be safe from gross oversell. We will see.
Dehring is the executive director of Windies Worldcup, the body set up to run the next tournament there in 2007. And, just as South Africa sought to bring its citizens together this time, so will the islands of the Caribbean try to patch up some of their own historical differences.
”Generally, I thought things here were exceptionally well run,” Dehring said.
”You will always get little problems here and there but, overall, it was easily
the most impressive of all the World Cups so far in terms of organisation. I do think the logistics were extremely difficult, especially with television, and we will be sitting down with the ICC to see what we can do next time. Clearly some things did go wrong. One of the most obvious was not conveying the Duckworth-Lewis situation to players and the paying public. We are going to have to ensure that never happens again and we will make it mandatory to have [the run-rate] posted electronically on all scoreboards.
”To be frank, there is always something that slips through the cracks when you are organising a tournament of this size. But a lot of things went well. Security has been exceptionally good. This was always going to be a particularly sensitive issue since September 11 and they have had to sacrifice some of their marketing in that regard, because of security.
”As for how we will handle things, we like to regard what problems we have as challenges, especially in terms of logistics. We will have to create much from scratch, in terms of railway lines, for instance, and we will have to come up with some innovative solutions.
”Yet from these obstacles could come much good. We will be striving to bring together our different nations, something we have been trying to do for a very long time in the political and financial arenas. We want the free movement of people and money between the islands. It is absurd that it is not so at the moment. And we want to create the feeling of being one country.
”Cricket is the only thing that binds us together as a nation. But I detect a wave of unity. Already we have been having regular meetings of the various prime ministers to discuss the World Cup and how we might best use it for other purposes. I want the World Cup to leave a lasting legacy. We will never have a bigger opportunity to do that for our islands.”
OUT
England – No-show in Harare, rain at Zimbabwe-Pakistan
West Indies – Rain v Bangladesh, New Zealand no-show in Kenya
South Africa – Rain v Sri Lanka, New Zealand no-show in Kenya
IN
Zimbabwe – England no-show rain v Pakistan in Bulawayo
Kenya – New Zealand no-show in Nairobi
New Zealand’s no-show in Nairobi gave the Kenyans four points by default which
put West Indies and South Africa at a considerable disadvantage. – (c) Guardian Newspapers Limited 2003