Champions tourney tests the law of diminishing returns

When the International Cricket Council set up their international knockout tournament as a means of raising funds for cricket development, it seemed like a very good idea.

And with cricket development officers appointed and in place around the world there has to be some merit in what has already been achieved.

The original idea remains a good one.

It is the changes that have been made for this year's tournament that are questionable. A great deal more time and money, mainly in accommodation expense has been shelled out, but the return in terms of tightly-contested matches is little, if any better than in previous tournaments.

The change in format to a pools system involving basically one key match in each of four pools to decide the semi-finalists does seem to have been an inordinate waste of time.

To have teams sitting around for a week between matches, and unimportant matches for that matter, because of the nature of the tournament draw is little short of ridiculous.

No-one has been surprised that the decision to play key matches, South Africa v West Indies, Pakistan v Sri Lanka and Australia v New Zealand, in the first days of the tournament, has back-fired.

Instead of having a tournament that builds up naturally, the ICC have got it off to a start with a hiss and a roar and then created a vaccum, only partially filled by activity in the pool of death involving India, Zimbabwe and England.

What better advertisement for the game might have been achieved had the less important matches been played earlier?

Or for that matter, how much more impact might have been made had the traditional knockout formula been applied?

Another consideration has to be the timing of the event.

Only six months out from a World Cup does seem strange.

Would it not have been more suitable to have put more space between the two events by playing the World Cup in September-October in South Africa next year, or to have played the Champions Trophy in April-May earlier this year?

It is not without some irony that collecting the world's best cricketers and depositing them in the same city has been of benefit to the players' union, FICA which, not surprisingly, has made the most of their rare opportunity.

Players sitting around with time to spare, like workers anywhere, get to comparing notes which is good for them because of the solidarity of purpose it can develop, but which has ominous implications for an employer.

That India have joined the players' group, giving it world-wide coverage, means that player power is set to grow, and when demands from the governing body result in tournaments such as this, with the attached provisos of sponsorship adherence, then the stage is set for an almighty bust-up somewhere down the track.

The possible legal consequences of all this will ensure that potentially yet another front is opened up at just the time the administrators had hoped they had quelled the fires of embarrassment that emerged in the match-fixing crisis.

Some worrying times face the ICC before the World Cup in South Africa.

The problem is that the ICC has only one product to sell, cricket, and with a television contract, it is clearly the way it can raise its revenue.

But with increased demands on players, so comes greater demands from players for a bigger slice of the action.

American sport, with all its professionalism, has any number of examples of this.

Then there are the cricket minnows who are the prospective beneficiaries of all this largesse.

How much are they really benefiting from being hammered by the heavyweights of the game?

Netherlands skipper Roland Lefebvre may think it is the only way to learn but there does have to be an easier method.

If spreading the word of the joys of cricket in the Netherlands and Kenya is the object of the exercise who is going to understand, when their national team is being thrashed, that it is really of benefit in the longer term?

Some wonderful cricket is in prospect in the last days of the tournament now that they leading teams are playing off against each other, but couldn't it all have been played a week earlier?

The opinions expressed in this story are not necessarily those of New Zealand Cricket.