Pietersen is on the ball

Fifty-one matches involving 14 teams spread over six weeks. It seems the ICC has learnt nothing at all from World Cup 2007 in West Indies. That event was widely held to be the worst World Cup yet: dull, uneventful and excessively long. And so, in their wisdom, cricket's movers and shakers have switched to a format that promises to rob the tournament of even the tiny bit of excitement it managed to generate last time. Little wonder that Kevin Pietersen and several others are unhappy. The only possible explanation is that this is an attempt by the administrators to wring every last dollar from the entire exercise.

Consider the format. The number of teams has actually been reduced from 16 to 14. But instead of using this to tighten up the tournament, the ICC has promptly decided on a format that renders the entire first month of matches meaningless. With just two groups of seven teams each, the established Test playing nations are almost guaranteed to go through to the quarterfinals. The previous tournament's set-up of having four groups of four teams each at least gave the minnows some chance of making it to the next stage. But perhaps that was the problem from the organisers' point of view. Big draws like India and Pakistan being knocked out early meant less viewer interest for the remainder of the tournament. By making it tougher for the big names to be knocked out, perhaps the new format is simply a cynical ploy to keep viewer attention.

And what of the scheduling? This time around, teams have as much as six days between matches in several instances. This is likely to rob both players and spectators of any momentum they might build up. If a committee had gathered to deliberate on ways to make the World Cup uninteresting, they could scarcely have bettered this edition's set-up.

(VIEW: Nothing wrong with the format)

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