A hesitant start (10 May 1999)

10 May 1999

A hesitant start

Qamar Ahmed

London: All major events suffer from teething problem and the 1999 cricket World Cup to be played from next Friday is no exception. There seems to be confusion allround and there is hardly any visible signs of world event being staged in the mother country of the game. Not much publicity on the local television or on commercial radio stations. Satellite channels however do plug in a slot here and there with interviews of players, but mostly by some of the stars of the past who will form their commentary team during the cup.

The World Cup extravaganza, the cricket fever, that we all experienced during the 1987 and 1996 competitions in our sub-continent and in Australia in 1992 is missing. The response generally is rather mute, perhaps because the target that the England Cricket Board and the World Cup event managers had aimed for is not met.

According to reports they are four million pounds off the target that they had expected. The first three World Cup games played in England were tagged the 'Prudential Cup', the one's played in the sub-continent were, Reliance Cup, 'Wills Cup', and the one in Australia was the, Benson Hedges Cup. No name here this time!. In this day an age of corporate marketing and sponsorship the organisers have failed to lure a major sponsor to name the Cup after them. Instead the present World Cup is being publicised as 'ICC WORLD CUP'.

Another publicity material depicts this competition as 'A carnival of cricket', which appears a misnomer. There is no sign of that carnival atmosphere here. Not many even know that a cricket world cup is to be played here from next week, unless one is used to browsing through the pages of the national newspapers. I have not even heard the World Cup theme song so far. Written by singer Dave Stewart of "Eurythmics", it is titled 'All over the world' and goes thus:

The grey clouds may not be inside anyone's head but certainly, have started to threaten the game itself. The warm up games and the World Cup matches itself are threatened by the weather forecast which is quite gloomy for the month. That surely will be a huge setback for the organisers and the participating teams.

Disappointment and confusion do not end here. In a recent meeting between Andrew Walpole of ECB, Michael Browning, the World Cup Events Manager, the media Accreditation authorities' Rushmans and the representatives of the Cricket Writer's Club it has been discovered that nearly 2,000 people have applied for accreditation, 500 of which had sent their application without any authorisation letter from their establishment and assignees. Even the UK national papers have made multi-application, in some cases eight of them from one newspaper. Lot of the applicants without any proper credentials are now being phased out. The accreditation authorities are now rectifying all problems brought to their attention.

The message from them now is do not panic and don't get stroppy and do communicate with them at all times.

Source :: The Dawn (www.dawn.com)