IPL vs T20 World Cup
Suresh Raina created history by scoring a century on 2nd May 2010 at in Indias league match against South Africa at St. Lucia. Suresh Rainas century was the first by an Indian in T20 internationals, and only the third ever in T20 internationals after West Indian Chris Gayle and New Zealander Brendom Mccullum. The moment Suresh Raina lofted a ball into the stands he raised his arms in jubilation because he knew he cleared the fence and in the process created history, but what was tragic was the first that there was hardly anyone else celebrating for the crowd was sparse and the match looked inconsequential to millions of viewers.
The ICC has to be blamed for messing up T20 World Cup. Firstly they have erred up in having the World Cup immediately after the Indian Premier League. Millions of cricket lovers all over the world are still releiving the magical moments of IPL 2010 and are yet to come out of that excited frame of mind that T20 wold cup was scheduled. The ICC should either asked the BCCI to have scheduled the IPL earlier or they themselves could have scheduled the T20 World Cup after a couple of months.
Another aspect which has killed the charm of the ongoing World Cup is by including teams like Afghanistan. Though the idea behind including minnows was to make the World Cup look more popular by increasing the teams but one must say the end result was a flop. On the contrary ICC should have buried its ego and copied the IPL format and gone for a round robin format with each Test playing team playing the other till the semi finals. This would have meant clashes between two equal teams and one which would have given lots of excitement to fans.
ICC by scheduling the T20 World Cup has literally removed the importance of World Cup. Most World Cups in any sport are conducted after a gap of 4 years. The idea behind is to generate special interest among the fans and motivate the players to give extra ordinary performances in what is supposed to be a once in a life time event for many players. True, 4 years may be too long but then ICC should have curtailed it down to 2 or 3 years but keeping it once a year makes it extremely hard for the players to motivate themselves to give their best.
ICC by holding a ODI world cup every 4 years and T20 World cup on a annual basis is doing a serious injustice to many star players and their fans. There are many cricketers like Sourav Ganguly and many other international players who would have finished their career with 3 World Cups against their name in a 2 decade career but a T20 World Cup held annually would give a player like Yousuf Pathan or Joginder Sharma to finish with more World Cup appearances in a 5 year cricking career than what their illustrious have managed in a two decade long career.
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