Cricket World Cup: all's crap that ends crap

If ever a tournament deserved to end as this one did then it was the 2007 ICC World Cup.  I'm not talking about the winners, as Australia deserve every accolade that they receive following a masterful and brutal display of one day cricket.  And not just yesterday either, but for the entirety of this tournament. 

No, this tournament deserved to end with a couple of ICC officials bungling in a half-lit arena whilst the entire watching audience looked on in a mixture of confusion, outrage and misanthropy.  A more apt allegory for the whole sorry eight weeks you could not write if you tried.

At one point after the first rain break Mahela Jayawardena had to forget the small task of concentrating on his batting to ask the officials if there was any chance of being told what total his side was now chasing; he was met by befuddled looks for a little while and they a scoreboard showing a D/L par score of zero! Later on, after the Sri Lankans took the offer of the light, the umpires prevented Australia from celebrating, even though a blind man who knows nothing about cricket could see the game was over.

This final, crowning turd atop the shit-pile leaves a legacy for this tournament that ICC officials should, if they have any decency, resign over.  The de-brief presentation that will soon happen at their HQ in Dubai will no doubt be watched from behind their fingers, such is the crippling embarrassment of what they have presided over.  This is meant to be the pinnacle of the one-day game, yet it has grabbed about as much attention as a public reading John Major's memoirs by Al Gore.

Granted, some of it was not their fault, for example it was not the ICC's doing that there were so many one-sided matches; but most of it was.  Thank Christ it's over and we can now focus on some decent cricket in the summer, which for England means West Indies and India.