Hold back your best player

Late changes to established teams in the run-up to a World Cup are a recipe for disaster
Amidst the myriad reasons for England's latest failure to win their first World Cup, England put all their eggs in the Cook basket, then jettisoned the basket shortly before the tournament, leaving them with a bunch of uncooked and partially scrambled eggs. Chris Woakes and James Taylor had their roles reassigned, Gary Ballance was summoned as a like-for-like replacement for Cook's batting when what was needed was an unlike-for-like substitution. This is not to suggest that England, without these voluntary upheavals, would have rampaged to World Cup glory. Not necessarily, anyway. But with the World Cup looming, the England selectors took the bull by the horns, and the bull has kebabed them like an incompetent matador.

Late changes to established teams in the run-up to a World Cup are a recipe for success
On January 11, three weeks after Cook was informed of his involuntary bonus spring vacation, Trent Boult made a comeback to the New Zealand ODI side. He had played in three of their previous 36 matches, after being dropped in November 2012 - one in February 2013, two in October 2014. Mitchell McClenaghan had played in 28 of those games, Kyle Mills in 26. They were New Zealand's two leading wicket-takers, with 56 and 30 victims respectively. Only one bowler had played more often, or sent down more overs. Boult took 0 for 98 in his first two matches back, leaving him with ten wickets at an average of almost 50 in a deeply unspectacular one-day career that stood in striking contrast to his Test performances (93 wickets at 25 in that same period).

If England's selectors had taken leave of any discernible remnants of their senses, then New Zealand's might have appeared to be doing the same. Boult has taken 15 wickets at 15 in the six group matches, ten of which have been top-four batsmen. McClenaghan played once, against Bangladesh, when, in an understandable outbreak of rustiness, he fell over a lot and watched his bowling disappear to the boundary a lot. Mills has remained unused.

The one bowler who had appeared and bowled more than the two jettisoned seamers - spinner Nathan McCullum, also usurped, replaced by the returning Daniel Vettori, who until October, had played three ODIs in three and a half years. Vettori has taken 13 wickets at 13.

With the World Cup looming, the New Zealand selectors took the bull by the horns, and slam-dunked the bull like a young Michael Jordan.

Pakistan's selectors are geniuses
Most people would have inked in Sarfraz Ahmed as Pakistan's wicketkeeper at the start of this tournament. They would have considered his three centuries and three further half-centuries in the latter half of 2014, scored at an extremely 21st-century scoring rate, and they would have concluded that he had probably earned enough selectorial patience to ride out a distinctly undisastrous run of middling scores in ODIs, which included some useful fast-scoring cameos, in the build-up to the World Cup. Then they would have considered the alternative - Umar Akmal, who, since August, had passed 15 just twice in ten ODI innings (a 46 and a 29), and whose name, incontrovertibly and with inescapable genetic foreboding, included the word "Akmal".

Those people would all have been idiots. Pakistan's selectors have pulled off a masterstroke of counterintuitive selectorial wizardry. They know that nothing can boost a side more than a transformation in fortunes - their nation's victory from the precipice of elimination in 1992 bears testament to that. As many a panicking football manager will tell you on Transfer Deadline Day, one of the best ways of achieving such a transformation is to introduce high-class players to the team who can make a significant improvement.

Sarfraz's recent performances proved beyond doubt that he was such a player. Therefore, he had to be left out. He had to sit on the sidelines whilst Pakistan's batsmen flunked and fumbled through their first few matches, and as Akmal spilled chances with familiar familial saucepan-handedness, as Nasir Jamshed, with a selfless heroism given to few, induced wicket-expectant complacency in Pakistan's opponents by scoring an almost negative amount of runs.

With the two defeats against India and West Indies duly secured, and an unconvincing batting display against Zimbabwe having proved conclusively that Pakistan would be no threat to any of the stronger sides and were a lively candidate to be eliminated before the knockout stage, Sarfraz was introduced for the vital, must-win matches against South Africa and Ireland.

A run-a-ball 49 against South Africa was highly influential in a low-scoring match; his six catches helped secure a momentum-shifting victory. Then his nerveless hundred of accumulative restraint made light work of the chase against the Irish (a game in which the now-gloveless Akmal took four catches in the field). How would Pakistan have achieved such tournament-shifting improvement without a player of Sarfraz's form and calibre to call upon? They would not. You might argue that they might not have been in such a mire in the first place, but that is none of anyone's business. Pakistan could not take that risk. They didn't need momentum for six weeks. They needed it for three.

This has surely established a blueprint for all future tournaments in all sports. Leave out one of your key players, take yourself to the brink of failure, then use a morale-boosting recall to slingshot yourself away from your early-tournament ineptitude. Genius. Pure, unadulterated, sport-changing selectorial genius.

No tournament should be designed with an in-built likelihood of a lengthy period of fizzle-out
The group stages peaked on March 7. Pakistan, needing a victory to maintain control of their destiny, defeated South Africa in a thrilling showdown that culminated in a newly invigorated pace attack steaming in to the world's finest batsman; then Ireland, also needing victory as a near-necessity rather than a pleasant incidental, rode some considerable donkeys of luck to hold off Zimbabwe in a thunderous classic of twists and controversy. There were still eight days of cricket until the end of the preliminary part of the tournament, four of which only featured one match. Of the 12 games played, only England v Bangladesh and Ireland against Pakistan were of decisive importance. Eight of the other ten had no major relevance.

The people, machines and/or deities who designed this tournament have no concept of sporting drama. Or, if they do, they have suppressed it. There has been much in the first four weeks of this tournament to highlight how good a World Cup could be and should be, but these have been moments, not a continuous narrative. The final ten days will be compelling. It could have been a month-long epic of almost unremitting excitement.