Yes, the rain relented, yes, we had a 20-over final to savour, and yes, India, the best team in the tournament, won and their supporters celebrated long into the night.
But the administrators should not get away with it. By staging a final without a reserve day, they messed with the fans and got lucky. They should never be allowed to do so again.
The official explanation is that there were only 17 days to stage the tournament, that there was "no wriggle room", and that bilateral tours take precedence. Are fans really expected to take such an explanation seriously?
You can praise the players for contesting a fluctuating final in difficult conditions. You can listen to people intellectualising about the amount of cricket played, and how difficult it is to cram spare days into the schedule.
You can retreat into comforting jokes about the essential awfulness of the English summer and even speculate that global warming could make it more unbearable than ever. You can listen to thousands of explanations about logistics, about what is possible and what is not.
None of that matters. Do not accept any explanation that you hear. The administrators need to understand that to stage the final of a major one-day tournament without a reserve day is as purblind as it gets.
If you do something, you have to do it properly. If you tell spectators that a tournament is important, and sell TV rights and tickets on that basis, there are basic standards you have to meet to try to bring it to a satisfactory conclusion.
We can all argue incessantly about the details: about how many sides should take part, how the groups should be drawn up, whether to pre-determine semi-final venues for the countries that qualify, how to choose between sides that finish on equal points.
No comments :
Post a Comment