Ganesh Subramanian, our cricket expert talks of why a packed calendar of ICC could still be justified if they pack it with relevant stuff and make sure important events don’t get lost to nature’s fury
So immediately after a good, exciting Champions Trophy comes a meaningless triseries featuring India, West Indies and Sri Lanka. Although Indian fans are delighted with the Indian victory in an exciting final, it begs the question whether the series must have been scheduled in the first place coming against the backdrop of a highly intense champions trophy. What was supposed to be Srilanka’s tour of West Indies ended up as a meaningless triseries.
While ICC’s FTP’s fundamental premise is the fact that member countries, that is, the top test playing nations play each other in each other’s home territory atleast once in 4 years. Often this rule is not adhered to as individual boards tend to cater more to their commercial interests than stick to the FTP.
As a result, tours are cut short, ODIs and T20 are increased, Test matches are pushed to the backseat and so on. Also the ICC has a fascination for scheduling important ICC events in rainy seasons in different countries. Also the concept of reserve days are accommodated or neglected according to some random whims and fancies.
An important tournament like the ICC champions trophy has no reserve days for rain affected matches and it’s sad that the tournament final turned out to be a 20-over affair, thanks to rain and absence of reserve days. On the contrary, the meaningless triseries that just concluded had reserve days for all the matches.
The ICC’s logic for shelving the Champions Trophy was again appalling. ICC’s logic means only 1 global event for each format of the game – The ICC CWC, World T20 and Test championship. Now who says that only 1 global event needs to be there for 1 format.
Despite the success of Champions Trophy this year and appeal from former players like David Gower to reconsider the decision of doing away with the Champions Trophy, ICC hasn’t budged from its idiotic stance and had maintained that the recent CT played was indeed its last edition. Instead of meaningless and obsolete triseries, ICC would do well to preserve the sanctity of global events like the ICC.
One can only hope that atleast in future ICC’s FTP is designed rationally and helps preserve the sanctity of this glorious game of uncertainties.
Related articles
- What to expect from the India-Sri Lanka-West Indies tri-series (playupblog.wordpress.com)
- Champions Trophy? Worthwhile for Aussie Fans or NOT? (pasttheposts.wordpress.com)
