Cricket + News + Some Bragging

It's time for some old-fashion, media style bragging. An "ICC bash story over the Super-Eight structuring and future predictions of World Cup matches" which has made the newspaper and web headlines today on Hindustan Times and Rediff.Com was broken out by this blog exactly 2 weeks back.

Thank you, Homer and Shakester for giving me the credit. While Karthikeya at A Cricketing View thinks of it as a media hype, saying that the ICC had announced the rules in 2005 itself, that's like saying that a stupidity overlooked for 2 years is not a stupidity anymore.

In case you are wondering what all this is about, let me fill you in with the details. The ICC has designed the world-cup rules this time such that it's possible to predict with close to 100% confidence the exact team-wise schedule of the Super-Eight stage, definitely the high point of the Cup. The ICC official site itself tells you when you can expect the Indo-Pak match to happen, when the English are likely to on the Aussies et al. Now, while it's all very fine that it helps everybody to plan out things in advance - the fans who are travelling and getting ticketd booked, the journos and the organsiers, the security staff et al, that cannot be the best logic, or can it be? The rule says that "in case Australia and South Africa go through to the super-eight stage, Australia will be treated as A1 irrespective of who finishes first because the ICC ratings will super-sede the points tally. " Nothing too wrong with that, because it doesn't really affect anyone in the end because everyone plays everyone else eventually. But wait, there is more "In the event of Scotland qualifying, Scotland becomes A1 if they have displaced Australia." Isn't that like going a bit too far, into the territory of the illogic? The ICC rules are not even clear on what happens if both Scotland and Netherlands go through. Will Malcolm Speed then decide who displaced Australia, and who pipped South Africa? Or will they leave it to the PCB to decide!!