Last Saturday afternoon at the Kensington Oval in Barbados South Africa were coasting to victory over India in the 2024 ICC Men’s T20 World Cup Final. Five overs – 30 balls – remain-ed, the target was just 30 runs, and South Africa still had six wickets in hand. India, inaugural winners of the tournament in 2007, appeared set to suffer the same fate as in the fifth final in April, 2014, at the Sher-e-Bangla Stadium in Dhaka, Bangladesh, where they lost to Sri Lanka by six wickets. The game was as good as over.
In a time of four ICC competitions – roughly one per annum – across three formats, India’s claim to greatness over the past 11 years has rung hollow with an empty trophy cupboard. Their stumbles at the final hurdle are well documented. They were beaten finalists in both editions of the ICC World Test Championship (2021 and 2023), despite being the best Test team over the last seven to eight years. Whilst defending their 2013 ICC Champions title, they suffered a humiliating 180-run defeat to their arch rivals Pakistan in the June 2017 final at the Oval in London. Last November, at Ahmedabad (home), they succumbed to Australia by six wickets, with seven overs to spare, in the final of the 2023 ICC Men’s Cricket World Cup (50 Overs).
Well, as the adage goes, “Cricket is a game of glorious uncertainties.” South Africa, despite winning over 61 percent of its ODIs, has only one major prize to show for such consistency, having captured the inaugural ICC Champions Trophy in 1998. After the Proteas middle-order pair of Heinrich Klassen and David Miller had plundered the Indian attack for 38 runs in the 14th and 15th overs, the Indian duo of Jasprit Bumrah and Hardik Pandya worked their magic to keep their team’s fast fading hopes alive. When the final over commenced, South Africa required 16 to win with four wickets in hand. By the time it was completed, they had lost by seven runs. Once again they had faltered. As the Indian players celebrated, the despondent South Africans reflected on another missed opportunity.
Whilst the subcontinent media have lavished praise on India’s triumph in finally capturing some silverware after 11 years, and the statisticians – numerical analyses have become an integral part of the narrative with this format of the game – have produced all kinds of ‘impact’ graphs and bar charts to confirm India’s superior performance, there have been rumblings that the tournament had been organised with a strong bias in favour of the Indian team.
Around 90 percent of the ICC’s television broadcast schedule is predicated by the Indian market. The
ICC’s television partner, Disney Star, paid US$3 billion for a four-year (2024 – 2027) deal and wants India’s matches to be beamed to prime time audiences in Asia. Hence, due to financial dictates, all of India’s games, regardless of location, were scheduled for 10.30 am starts. While all the other teams had to adjust to morning, afternoon or evening games, the Indian players’ body clocks were subjected only to the demands of travel itineraries, a distinct advantage.
As if this edge wasn’t enough, the playing regulations of the tournament specifically stated that a different set of rules applied to India with regard to the semi-finals. Article 16.10.6 reads: “NOTE: If India qualifies for the semi-finals, they will play in the second semi-final scheduled for Guyana on 27 June 2024.” India were well aware of this critical factor, months in advance. It gets even better. The two semi-finals were not subjected to the same regulations. The Guyana match did not have a reserve day, whilst the Trinidad game had one. If the former had been rained out, which was quite possible based on our annual heavy rainfall in June, India would have advanced to the final on the basis of having topped their group. Wouldn’t it have been fairer and logistically easier to have both semi-finals played in the same location with identical start times on alternate days, as was the case in 2010, when they were both held at the Beausejour Stadium in Gros Islet, St Lucia, when the West Indies hosted the third edition of the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup?
This is not the first time that the scheduling of India’s matches at an ICC tournament has raised eyebrows. This column (SN Editorial, The luck of the draw, 12th June, 2019) drew attention to this coincidental quirk when it occurred for the twelfth edition of the ICC Men’s World Cup which took place in England and Wales. It noted then, “The tournament was in its seventh day before India saw action in its first match against a fatigued South African team which was playing its third game of the competition. In a lengthy tournament of this nature [all nine teams played each other in a round robin in the initial round, with the top four advancing to the semi-finals] where endurance is a key factor, the South Africans appeared to have drawn (or were handed) the short straw. Last Sunday, following three days’ rest India played the tough Australians who were coming off of two days’ rest and taking the field for the third time in eight days. Tomorrow [Thursday, 13th June, 2019] India faces New Zealand who will be playing their fourth game, before tackling Pakistan in their second consecutive Sunday match, when they are likely to receive their most support. India then gets six days off before facing Test newcomers Afghanistan, as they begin the latter half of their schedule against the weaker sides (England excepted, their sixth opponent). Five days later they will encounter the by-then weary West Indies before concluding their campaign against Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. By playing the weaker teams in the latter stages of the round India gains the decided advantage of being able to improve their net run rate if need be. In this modern age of computers one would have thought that a fair and balanced schedule would have been produced for a tournament of this stature.”
The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) no doubt wields tremendous influence at the ICC, where it reaps US$230 million (38.5 percent) of the ICC ‘s net revenue for the current four-year (2024 – 2027) commercial cycle. None of the other full members receive a double digit share in the revenue pie. England is second with US$41.33 million (6.89 percent), whilst the CWI, in sixth position, receives US$27.5 million. It’s one thing to generate the lion’s share of the revenue and to be its main recipient, but it is an entirely different matter when it comes to stipulating terms and conditions which clearly favour one team.
India may have deservedly lifted the trophy with their outstanding performances, but perhaps an asterisk should be applied to this year’s title, or the ICC can borrow some nomenclature from the golf world and rename the competition: the 2024 India Invitational T20 Championships, jointly hosted by the West Indies and the USA.
