This World Cup needs classic moments
What is needed to ignite the 10th World Cup is not glitz and glamour but the draw of keenly-fought contests between even teams, writes Rob Bagchi in The Guardian .
Liam Brickhill
25-Feb-2013
What is needed to ignite the 10th World Cup is not glitz and glamour but the draw of keenly-fought contests between even teams, writes Rob Bagchi in The Guardian.
This is supposed to be the tournament that puts all those moribund moneyspinning seven-game series into some sort of context beyond the purely financial. But it has been so badly served by administrators' bloating the itinerary and so thoroughly eclipsed by a flashier, even more ephemerally enjoyable format that a failure to excite this time will just about render it redundant.
It may endure a living death in the future as a made-for-television marathon devoid of emotion and substance, as an upmarket version of the Champions Trophy, but it needs a jolt to save its soul and significance.
There are two important elements missing from this World Cup, adds Steve James in The Telegraph - Marcus Trescothick and Herschelle Gibbs.
Not the obvious choices, granted, as they are clearly not quite the very best, but I’ve just got a soft spot for Trescothick’s brutal and bucolic simplicity, and for Gibbs’s charming chutzpah, strolling down the pitch to the quickest of bowlers and depositing them over extra cover.
But, sadly, both have had their problems, meaning neither is now in international cricket.
Liam Brickhill is a freelance journalist based in Cape Town