One of the top organizer of ICC World Cup said that the format of this year’s ICC World Cup has been planned in a manner that it is most likely to favor major teams like Pakistan and India big chance of going through the final stages of the tournament.
ICC World Cup director Mr. Ratnakar Shetty explained that learning from previous ICC World Cup, which was held at the beautiful Caribbean island (which was labeled disastrous World Cup tournament of all in the history) specifically because two of the most anticipated teams Pakistan and India had made an early exit from the tournament. And in order to avoid such disasters, it is pre-planned to give such teams advantage and fair chance of advancing towards the knock-out stages so that the anticipation towards World Cup may not be a disastrous one this time.
Just like last time when World Cup was held in South Asia (in year 1996) ICC introduced Quarter Final schema in the fixtures but later it was discarded, but this time it has been reused to make sure each team will play 6 group matches and teams like Pakistan and India will have enough space to make room for the knock-out stage.
Let’s revise you that the World Cup 2007 was based on a fixture including 4 groups in which there were four teams in each respectively with only two teams from each group qualifying for the Super Eight round before they could qualify for the semi-final matches.
And in this year’s World Cup, there are 14 teams that are divided into two groups and each group has 4 top ranking teams and 3 teams that are lower in rank. Now it will be sheer back luck for teams like India and Pakistan if they still wouldn’t qualify for Quarter Final. And it is believed that if all goes well, such “unstable or unpredictable” teams may qualify for Semi’s as well.
Some sports website asked Shetty that whether the rumor is real or not about the format of this year’s world cup, and Shetty agreed to their question in affirmation.
He admitted that Pakistan and India are two teams whose matches are most anticipated and economically it will be a disaster for the tournament if there is still a flaw existing in the format of the World Cup that could cause these two favorite teams from exiting the tournament before even reaching the Knock-Out stage.
It is believed by the statisticians that at least India has a very bright chance of qualifying to Semi-Final or even Final (and who knows, they might win the World Cup as well).