Farewell to the champions
Brydon Coverdale
25-Feb-2013
Getty Images
The World Cup will be the end of an era, according to Robert Craddock in The Courier-Mail. He says the future might be bleak for a while after what will probably be the World Cup swansongs for stars like Glenn McGrath, Brian Lara, Adam Gilchrist, Sanath Jayasuriya, Sachin Tendulkar, Inzamam-ul-Haq, Sourav Ganguly, Matthew Hayden and Shaun Pollock.
Cricket is about to lose a generation of blue-bloods who have underpinned its success for the past decade. Yet there is no expectation that the generation of players below them will soar to the same stellar standards. The game is short of new stars.
Peter Wilson writes in The Australian about lingering concerns for tourists attending the World Cup.
Jamaica's new airport is not finished, the new Sabina Park stadium has been bogged down with construction delays and millions of dollars of promised beautification works never happened. There has been a malaria outbreak in the western suburbs of its capital Kingston, gang violence has killed more than 100 people in the past two months, and farmers have warned that a drought has left them struggling to provide enough food for the visitors. This week an earthquake even struck the islands.
In The Advertiser, Darren Lehmann also airs his concerns about the tournament.
Brydon Coverdale is an assistant editor at ESPNcricinfo. He tweets here