The world at our feet (20 December 1998)

20 December 1998

The world at our feet

By Scyld Berry

IN ADVANCE of the 1999 World Cup the theme song has already been released, under the title It's Not Just Cricket. This song begins: "It's Heroes, It's Villains. It's Old Enemies, It's New Friends. It's Split Second Skill, It's Day Long Drama."

It is pretty execrable stuff, too, as far as the lyrics go, but at least the cricket in the seventh World Cup - and the fourth to be staged in England - should be entertaining, at any rate if quantity is anything to go by.

In the first World Cup, in 1975, eight teams played 15 matches in a fortnight; there was no theme song, and a profit of only £150,000 was made in those commercially innocent times. So doubtful were the old Test and County Cricket Board about the attraction of this new-fangled tournament that they lined up four Ashes Tests for later in the summer to cover any World Cup losses.

This time 12 teams will play 42 matches in the space of five weeks in front of 500,000 spectators and a predicted television audience of two billion. There might even be a sizeable profit, as this is the first World Cup that the International Cricket Council will have independently audited. It is very strange, but somehow the two Asian tournaments realised nothing for all the billions of rupees sloshing around.

In addition to the nine Test teams, three other countries have qualified. "It's Action on the Pitch, It's Action in the Stands" as the song goes on, "It's Young Turks, It's Old Warriors." Strictly speaking, however, it is going to be Young Bangladeshis, Kenyans and Scots, agreeable as it would be for Turkey to join ICC and stage one-day internationals on the Bosphorus.

The 12 countries will be divided into two groups of six, who will play each other once. The top three teams from Group A will then proceed to the 'Super Sixes' in which they will each play the top three teams from Group B, adding the points on to the ones they gained from the qualifying round. The top four at the end of all that - in effect the teams who win five or more of these eight games - will contest the semi-finals.

It's Quite Complicated, It's Rather Baffling, in other words, but it is the best arrangement in the circumstances. The ideal format was the one for the 1991-92 World Cup in Australasia, when the nine countries played each other once and the top four went through, simple as that. The worst format was last time when the qualifying rounds resulted in nothing more than reducing the six teams in each group to four, and allowed abysmal England into the quarters on the strength of beating Holland and UAE.

The chief threat to this tournament lies in the weather and prevailing conditions. It had to be staged before Wimbledon for TV reasons (the World Cup will be the Beeb's last fling in cricket), or else after Wimbledon, in which case it would have come rather too close to rugby's World Cup.

A secondary consideration behind the England and Wales Cricket Board's decision to opt for May and June was that early-season pitches should favour England with their Ealhams and Alleynes. India, who won the last time a World Cup was held in England in 1983, and the holders Sri Lanka, are both in England's group and possess bowling which is more spin-based.

There are some lyrics which could have been included in the theme song, like: "It's May, It's Raining. It's Chester-le-Street, It's Brass Monkey Freezing. It's Green Seaming Wickets, It's a White Ball Swinging Big Time. It's Seamers Jagging All Over the Shop, It's Low Totals and Early Finishes."

The 42 games are being shared out so generously that Edinburgh will host two, and Holland another (South Africa v Kenya) on their new turf pitch at Amstelveen, while the West Indian followers and party-goers known as the Trini Posse will no doubt make their match against Bangladesh a very sober affair.

South Africa, England and Sri Lanka are the teams most likely to progress from Group A to the 'Super Sixes', although the improving Zimbabweans could easily trip up any of them and allow India through. From the other group Australia, Pakistan and West Indies should progress, with New Zealand ready to benefit if one of the latter two does not have its house in order.

South Africa must be the favourites, followed by the new Australian specialist one-day side under Steve Waugh. The favourites, however, have not won since the 1970s when there was nobody to threaten West Indies, so in that sense England stand a chance of winning their first World Cup.

Source :: Electronic Telegraph (https://www.telegraph.co.uk)