Cricket's showpiece event is set to kick off next week but it's as much about business as it is about the romance of the game. Sunday Times looks at everything that's different about this World Cup. The first cricket World Cup in 1975 was not even called the World Cup. With only 15 games and a new one-day format that everyone still saw as a "necessary evil" that followed Test matches, insurance-giant Prudential insisted as tournament sponsor that it be called the Prudential Cup. teams and see who was best: in a way that geeky and constantly oscillating rankings could never hope to match.
Cricket's World Cup 2015 is very different from that first edition. Starting on Valentine's Day with 42 matches over 43 days, 14 teams and an estimated global TV audience of over 1 billion, it may be dwarfed in size by the Olympics or the soccer World Cup but remains the holy grail of the cricketing world and generates significant business, much of it in India. With Amitabh Bachchan sitting in the commentary box for the India-Pakistan game and commentary also in regional languages, it also promises to be a different viewing experience, reflective as much of India's madness for the game as that madness shaping it. There is a reason why the tournament's first half in the group stages is essentially predictable: to ensure against an early exit by India or any of the big teams. Organizers and sponsors know what happened in 2007 when India and Pakistan crashed out of the Caribbean World Cup early. It killed TV interest in India and ruined the business that sustains such events. This time, everyone will be waiting for the quarterfinals when the big games really begin. PRE-FAB PITCHES
From the overs being reduced to 50 in 1987, to the first coloured clothing and white balls in 1992, Cricket's World Cups have been signposts for how the game itself has evolved over the years. Its eleventh edition, returning Down Under after a decade and a half, will be different in more ways than one. One of the charms of cricket is the special role of host pitches which can completely alter the game. Australia, in the myth-making of cricket, has always been the land of pace and bounce, and New Zealand of seam and swing. Five of seven knockout games in this World Cup, though, will be played on drop-in pitches, curated away from the venue and dropped in before games, which significantly reduce the special peculiarity of local playing-conditions. The advent of pre-fabricated surfaces even prompted one Australian writer to call the tournament a.
How much this matters is debatable but the other big change from the last World Cup is the introduction of two new balls: one from each end. This is a good move aimed at checking the batting bias in one-day internationals (ODIs), with batsmen scoring more and more runs in each edition of the World Cup. The 1996 and 1999 editions produced over 14,000 runs each, but from 2003 onwards, each World Cup had produced over 18,000 runs. The two new balls rule will aid fast bowlers but may also diminish the role of spinners. India, with its mediocre bowling attack, for example, faces an uphill task.
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