The World Cup is a Bust
The emperor is wearing no clothes.It's time we admitted it. Despite all the hopes and all the work, CWC has failed to perform for the Caribbean. Hotels bookings are suffering, restaurants are complaining, stores are empty, even the cricket grounds have many open seats.
Of course, the organisers are desperately trying to paper over these cracks, but they're mostly living in denial. CWC 2007 is a bust. For governments which spent US$400 million on facilities and planning, the day of reckoning is coming.
Perhaps our expectations were too high. Perhaps we wanted to be misled, believing that the tournament was the next Magic Bullet to help our fragile markets progress to the next level. But the history of major sporting events is a checkered one, with some delivering but many failing to bring lasting benefits to their hosts.
I hope our populations don't wake up with a huge hangover and dispense their own form of censure to governments who brought the cup here. Elections are due in Barbados soon, and that will be one big test.
And please, don't call it cricket.
Call it bat-and-ball, hit-and-run, or anything. But not cricket. Because this game they're playing is as far away from cricket as Pluto is from the Sun (and look what happened to Pluto).
Like most people, I can't keep track of the new rules and wrinkles. Powerplays, Duckworths, Third umpires (is there also a fourth? Soon there'll be a committee), they all swim in my head and serve to confuse me. Soon they be saying you must bowl with both feet off the ground or bat with a baseball-style rounded bat, or wear swimsuits.
The ICC has been tinkering endlessly with the game in an attempt to make it more spectator-friendly. But the spectators are dumb, ignorant, attention-challenged and ultimately fickle beyond belief. They aren't cricket's natural audience, and twisting and torturing the game to meet their fashions merely loses both constituents - the loyalists and these twits.
My point is this: you wouldn't contort a normal product this much, just to match new consumers. You'd create a new one. The Olympic sports and soccer haven't changed in years, and they still get enormous crowds. Why does cricket feel it has to put on new clothes to impress people?
And don't even talk to me about 20/20. That's a fete match, pure and simple.
Am I wrong? Then why are the grounds under-subscribed? Why the empty seats (were they all bought by Indian and Pakistani fans who have gone home?). And since the centre of gravity in cricket has moved decisively to the East, is anyone consulting these billions of fans?
Cricket has lost its way, blindly chasing fans at the expense of everything else. CWC is a failure, and it's time we recognised that, and fixed the game.
* Greg Hoyos is the Founder and Chairman of GHA DDB; an affiliate of DDB Worldwide. This column was first published on the Caribbean360.com Web site.