This year's world had many empty stadiums! A world cup in India and still empty stadiums? yes blame it on ICC for inviting too many teams who are amatures in International Cricket. The so called "minos" Ireland, Netherlands, Canada and now even Kenya and Zimbabwe and Bangladesh has been added to the list, I say it only as so called minios cause often they have surprised big teams such as Pakistan, India and England in cruel games so "giant killers" would be the suitable name instead of minios. To spread the popularity of the games many teams should be added in the international circuit but its unfair to invite them to the world cup directly and expose them in front of the giants, most of the time it would end as an one sided affair and who would like to see a one sided affair in the stadiums? When I went to see the match between New Zealand and Kenya it was all over before lunch, New Zealand chased a nothing score of 87 in around 8 overs. Bangladesh though they are shaping out to be a decent team was bowled out for 57 by West Indies and things were the same when Sri Lanka hammered Canada and when South Africa thrashed Ireland. Matches like these makes the World Cup really boring and in a time when 50 Overs game becoming unpopular matches like these will kill the format, but fortunate we got some some giant killing matches when the historical arch rivals Ireland defeated England and when Netherlands almost defeated England and when Canada bowled out Pakistan for less than 185 and when Zimbabwe fought hard to score 260 against Australia. If these eventful matches had not taken place then the World Cup would have been really sleepy. It was only after 7 World Cup matches a decent match between took place, which will really affect the game and do serious damage to the reputation of world cup. Last year when Pakistan and India was out in the first round of the game the sponsors and organizers had to face heavy losses due to poor turn out of the rest of the tournament, sensing this, this year the ICC has organized the match in such a way that the match will be interesting atleast till the quarter finals. So it can be said that only after the first 3 weeks of the World Cup the real battle begins. The little teams can be surprise and upset bigger teams but too many of them will be boring at the same time you cannot avoid them too because the game has to be spread and the best option is to invite them for triangular series or arranging matches between the the Asian minos Bangladesh vs Netherlands, Canada or the others. Zimbabwe was once an emerging team in the world cup, they had defeated India and other teams, so was Kenya which managed to get into the 2003 Semi Finals, but due to some unfortunate events in their home land cricket had to take a back seat in Zimbabwe and I don't know what happened to Kenya, looks like now they are back to square one, sadly.
If there is one place where all the minios can be invited it should be the T20 World Cup or even inviting them to play T20 matches which will be spicy and will help to spread the popularity of the game, the best team that has emerged out of the minos tag this year is Ireland, the managed to defeat and send Pakistan home in the last world cup and this year they have chased 300 pulse runs against England, Kevin O Brayn became an house hold name when he scored the quickest world cup hundred and they even managed to put up a decent fight against India. Its reported that their next target is Test Cricket, which is very good to heat, because that is the real test and every little teams should be aiming for that, the ICC should up and help these teams and should help the game to spread across the globe.
In the next world cup which will be held in Australasia the ICC has planned to cut down the number of teams, instead in the next 4 years more little teams should be given standard international exposure so that the number of quality teams can be increased, in past 15 years no new teams has manged to get Test Status except Bangladesh a few yeas back but now they continue to live under the minos tag and Zimbabwe has lost their test status for not being able to be active in international cricket due to political reasons in their country.
To spread the game beyond the present boundaries the ICC should come out of their high comfort zone and must ensure that the game is popular in Europe and other parts of the world by involving them in T20 Cricket or else after 2 decades we will continue to be in the same situation where we should be baring one side matches.
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