Former England cricketer Michael Atherton recently criticized the ICC Men’s Cricket World Cup Super League for being complex. On Sky Sports Cricket said that people will have difficulty to understand the whole thing.
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Michael Atherton slams ICC
On Monday the ICC announced the inaugural Men’s Cricket World Cup Super League tournament that will feature a total of 156 games which will begin with England’s three-match ODI series against Ireland from July 30. Primarily the intention of the league is to determine the qualification for the men’s World Cup in 2023 scheduled to be played in India with the top seven teams getting direct entry. Michael Atherton spoke about the same in an interaction. “There is always logic in everything that happens, but what tends to happen is that it’s incredibly complex because what you’re trying to do is fit two systems together.”
He further added, “You’ve got the ICC global events – World Cup, World T20, and what was the Champions Trophy – and you’re trying to marry that with the usual bilateral series in what’s called the Future Tours Programme where every team plays against each other. Trying to mix those two together is incredibly difficult, and you end up with this.”
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Man on the street cannot understand this
According to Michael Atherton this whole process would be a tough one for the laymen to understand. Common fans will fail to get the idea and lose interest. “Try explaining this to the man on the street, try explaining the World Test Championship to the man on the street, which we find it hard enough to understand and we work in the damn game, and then try explaining that to the man on the street.”
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He continued, “We all talk about meaningless bilateral cricket that doesn’t have any context, and then the ICC try and put together the World Test Championship and everyone goes ‘the points system is too complicated’ and then they try the Super League and they say ‘Why are they doing that?’ “They’re damned if they do, they’re damned if they don’t.”
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