Cricket Funny, ICC Funnier

Now, cricket fans like me and you have known this for quite some time, and discussed it and rubbished it a thousand times already - that the likes of Bermuda and Canada stand no real chance of making it to the second stage of the ICC Cricket World Cup. All cricket experts (except the ones at the International Cricket Committeee) agree that the World Cup will not be richer, but poorer by the presence of so many winnows - that the league stage is no more than an extended warm-up before the action hots up in the Super Eights. Funnily, the ICC too agrees with us now - and it's official and you it's for everyone to see, on the ICC official website .........

Now, i don't know why they needed to do these, but the collective wisdom at ICC being what it is, decided to do just this - the super eight schedule actually goes on to mention the likely participants for these matches. For example, the ICC tells us that in all likelihood, on the 27th of March, Australia will take on the West Indies in the first Super Eight encounter, and so on and so forth!! Luckily, they have not extended the generosity of their prophesies into the Semi-Finals and Finals - thank God for small mercies.

Now, you may accuse me of over-reacting because there is a small disclaimer at the bottom explaining the raison d'etre behind ICC's latest foray into fortune-telling. But it's there that I learnt of another most bizzare new rule for the ICC Cricket World Cup's Super-Eight stage. You may need to read this twice or thrice over before you understand/assimilate it - and this has nothing to do with your IQ. I quote from the ICC's site.

" Team names for the Super Eight stage are indicative based on the top two teams from the Group Stage qualifying. If these two teams do qualify they will be seeded in position 1 or 2 as specified regardless of whether they finish first or second in their group. For example, if South Africa wins Group A and Australia comes second, for the purposes of the Super Eights, South Africa will still be A2 and Australia will be A1. If, for example, Scotland qualifies instead of Australia, Scotland will become A1 "

There can be only way of explaining this most-weird rule - that the ICC is suddenly seeing a potential goldmine in the ICC Cricket Ratings and would like each cricket fan to know and remember the rankings of each team - and not the current one, but the rankings on the date ICC has decided. For your ease of convenience, they have put it on the official website - all you need to do is click, go, memorize!!

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anyone aware of the amount which LG has paid ICC for becoming the exclusive sponsor of the ICC Cricket Ratings, please enlighten us by leaving a small comment - the figure may well explain the reasons behind this brilliantly confusing new rule.