After the Rediff expose of the ICC schedule bungle — perhaps as a result of an overzealous website editor/copywriter — I did some thinking on the nomination of the teams as A1, A2, B1, B2, etc.
For a brief period the ICC schedule website, had the following rule in it (copied from Rediff who were quick enough to clip it from there!):
“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.“
Note that the ICC runs two schedule websites, here and here — the latter being the website being run for the ICC by its official Internet partner, www.indya.com!
Let us think this through logically. The Super8 stage is a league where every team plays every other team apart from the one from its own Group (which it would have played already and carried over points from). So, it doesn’t really make a difference which team is named A1, A2, B1, B2, C1, C2, D1 and D2 — given that they will all play each other! For example, even if India wins all its 3 group games and tops Group-B, it would not make a difference if India is named B2 and Sri Lanka (say) is named B1 — as long as India carries over 2 points into the Super8 stage.
Now, why would the ICC want to label India as B2?
Easy. If the ICC did that, India would play most of its games on Saturdays or Sundays. Big TV audience. Big moolah! Clever.
The ICC would maximise its TV revenue if it labels the teams in the following way (assuming no upsets in the Group games by the 8 minnows that are just there to make up the numbers and fatten the stats).
A1: Australia
A2: South Africa
B1: Sri Lanka
B2: India
C1: New Zealand
C2: England
D1: Pakistan
D2: West Indies
This will mean that marquee games (or showcourt games) that would have larger TV audiences would be on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays! Note the strategically positioned gap in the schedule between the Wednesday 4th April and Saturday 7th April. That’s so that India can play South Africa on Saturday the 7th of April, if we follow the labelling as above. An alternative to the above labelling is that D1 and D2 are swapped — this would make a toss of a difference to the “revenue earning” games that matter — as far as the ICC is concerned! The swapping of A1 and A2 will also produce reasonable dollar results for the ICC — after all, is that not their main concern?
However, I am pretty confident that India will be labelled B2 and Australia will be A1, regardless of the Group results.
In the event that the labelling is as I indicated above, India’s Super8 games will be:
- Saturday 31 March: Australia V India
- Monday 02 April: New Zealand V India
- Saturday 07 April: South Africa V India
- Wednesday 11 Apr: England V India
- Sunday 15 April: India V Pakistan
- Thursday 19 April: West Indies V India
How convenient? This is smart, but devious of the ICC, in my view. Devious because I haven’t seen this transparently explained anywhere. In the absence of such transparency, most people would like to believe that the labelling follows the normal rule which would suggest that the leader assumes first spot in the Group table…
– Mohan
Like this:
Be the first to like this post.
