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Post-World Cup, and life moves on. The champions are off to the West Indies, having had only a few days to savour their success. Two Sundays ago, the Australians were celebrating an emphatic World Cup triumph. Seven days later, they embarked for the Caribbean, that win necessarily consigned to the past as the next challenge beckons. World Cup? What World Cup?
"Off-season" is no longer part of the international cricketing lexicon. The show must go on, schedules met, the protagonists relentlessly ground down by the demands of their profession. In the West Indies, Australia will seek to build on their 17-game winning streak, but only after the important stuff -- a four-Test series that, based on West Indies' batting potential and their formidable home record, promises to be a worthwhile contest.
For a sizeable part of the rest, one-day cricket is still on the immediate agenda. For the cricket boards of India, South Africa, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, a 43-day tournament was not enough to sate their appetite for the limited-overs game. No, they must have more, and consented to participate in what are now quadrangular and triangular events in Sharjah and Bangladesh respectively, less than two weeks after the World Cup.
Really, it is incomprehensible. Why anyone thought it made sense to program multi-nation tournaments at neutral venues immediately following the Cup is impossible to understand. They are not part of anyone's season or tour, not perennial commitments. Their intrinsic value is zero, which their ad hoc arrangement and player availability demonstrates.
Initially, South Africa, Pakistan and Sri Lanka were scheduled to play in Sharjah from April 1, before South Africa pulled out citing safety. The organizers were not daunted, however, roping in Zimbabwe and Kenya (after South Africa reportedly refused to play at an alternate location, Sri Lanka) while South Africa instead committed to travelling to Bangladesh to meet the hosts and India. The re-arranged Sharjah Cup tournament has since been ambiguously named the Cherry Blossom Cup. What the bookies are calling it is not known.
Meaningless at the best of times, these particular tournaments are more nonsensical than ever. In the aftermath of a World Cup, one wonders what a tri-series can possibly prove to anyone. That Pakistan is better than Sri Lanka, or vice-versa? Wasn't that what the World Cup was for? When you've just contested the biggest one-day tournament in four years, what is the point of competing in a smaller one just weeks later? Even other maligned sporting bodies like FIFA wouldn't contemplate scheduling a quadrangular tournament straight after its grandest event.
One-day cricket for its own sake can only devalue the game at international level, which is precisely what has happened. Players (think Rhodes, Donald, Srinath, Warne) are increasingly beginning to choose to play just one form of the game, though this is admittedly a reaction to excessive scheduling generally, not just the proliferation of ODIs which may have shortened the length if not volume of their careers.
Beyond the World Cup, it is clear one-day internationals have assumed a lesser status. They stopped being exciting novelty events long ago, and while the public appetite for them, particularly in Asia, has meant the authorities have not exactly killed the goose that laid the golden egg, that goose is increasingly resembling a rather sickly battery hen.
For a long time now one-day games have been strategic events, played to a plan. It is not so much hit-and-giggle as calculate-and-forget. Therefore, like Test cricket (which also has tradition, history and, arguably, greater intrinsic merit and aesthetic appeal on its side), one-day internationals must have something riding on the result. In the World Cup, even the revenue-raising Champions trophy, they do. Otherwise
While every self-respecting team wants to win each game and tournament its contests, the fact of the matter is that between now and 2007, most one-day games will at best serve as some form of preparation for the next World Cup. Accordingly, nations may as well begin to think ahead and start to build their teams and planning around that tournament now. One-day cricket -- apart from the matter of pride and records, motivational factors that eventually lose their appeal under the strain of constant competition, as the match-fixing episode shows -- is a vehicle for experimentation and the blooding of young players.
Pakistan took part in Sharjah not for the prestige but, seemingly having sacked all their senior players, to give their inexperienced tyros a "taste of international cricket". Glorified practice, really.
Tendulkar, Dravid, Ganguly and co must have asked themselves what, after reaching a World Cup final, was the point of going to Bangladesh to play the hosts and South Africa. The answer was clear. Tendulkar and Dravid are not going. They have minor injuries (probably), and want rest. Teams may as well give their over-worked first choice players a rest and send their 'A' teams to compete against each other -- which, while their national teams are still in action, Australia and South Africa are doing.
South Africa's 'A' team is in Australia at the moment to play six one-dayers and two three-dayers against their Australian counterparts. This series will arguably be of more benefit to the countries concerned than the aforementioned ODI tourneys, as it pits second-tier players against opponents stronger than Zimbabwe, Kenya or Bangladesh. It is development, but without the pretence of an international tournament, from which the greatest value derived for India, Pakistan, South Africa and Sri Lanka (apart from enriching their Boards, which as we know is what they are really about) is their new players being exposed to top level cricket, such as it is.
It is quite a different matter for the likes of Kenya, openly desperate for any international cricket and along with Zimbabwe tossed a rare bone by being added to the Cherry Blossom Cup as an afterthought. If we were serious about development and supporting the less established teams, then Kenya and Bangladesh could have been invited to Australia to contest a quadrangular tournament with the 'A' teams, or better yet some first-class matches. That, at least, would have some value to all concerned.
It certainly makes a lot more sense than sending the likes of Bangladesh up against Australia's full national team, as will happen in a few months, or competing in largely pointless tournaments for which the senior players have little time and the sport no purpose.