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Pizzazz please

England, media ignore Cricket World Cup

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Posted: Wednesday June 16, 1999 05:30 PM

The Cricket World Cup final may be just days away, but here in England you wouldn't necessarily know it. The lack of ballyhoo that normally accompanies the semifinal stage of major sporting events has been replaced by something only one step removed from apathy.

Less than twenty-four hours before Pakistan was to take on New Zealand in the opening semi in Manchester, the team's final training sessions attracted just a handful of camera crews, a smattering of print journalists, and no fans. And while the final session before the second semi between Australia and South Africa in Birmingham was a little more populated, it was hardly what you'd call a throng.

It's not as if the cricket was pushed out of the headlines by anything particularly significant. The Wimbledon Tennis Championships haven't started yet. The week of horse racing at Royal Ascot is more of a venerable institution than a sporting event.

The football season is over. Not that you'd now it of course, with the endless transfer speculation and fatuous features on how we're going to see Gazza quit the booze and cigarettes and get back to his best.

Yet despite the paucity of news, the World Cup semifinals have been virtually buried. Now, I don't for one minute suggest that attendance has been poor. The die-hard cricket fans from around the world may not have been served-up the promised "Carnival of Cricket", but there have certainly been some good matches, and I gather they've mainly been sold out.

However it's not the die-hards that make an event like this, it's the passing trade so to speak. The people who wouldn't know an off-spinner from a spin drier, who usually get caught up in the moment in spite of themselves. It happens in soccer. On our trip to Old Trafford for the Pakistani training session, every second house apparently contained a fervent Manchester United supporter, with the triple-winners logo on blanket display. Try finding a poster about the cricket World Cup however, and it's easier finding a Knicks fan in Indiana.

Now granted, there was inevitably a degree of deflation when the hosts, England, were eliminated from the tournament after the first round in an embarrassing fashion. This was compounded by the equally ignominious exit of the normally effervescent West Indians, which meant the tournament simultaneously waved goodbye to their large expatriate Caribbean following. The bulk of Britain's immigrant Asian population was also disappointed by India's failure to advance past the Super Sixes stage. But come on. This is a "World" Cup. Surely it's due some respect.

So why has it failed to stir the senses? Well in my view it's not because the game is simply unfathomable, as many Americans feel. Like baseball, the complexities may be baffling, but it's essentially a simple principle. It's also not inherently boring. One-day cricket can go down to the wire just as well as any NBA play-off game. You can't even say it's an unknown sport of minority interest. In fact it's one of the world's most universal games, played at the highest level on four of the five continents.

No, what's lacking is personalities. It has no Ronaldo. It has no Michael Jordan. It has no Anna Kournikova. In short, it has no face. Even the journalists at the semifinal training sessions were struggling to name the players, and if the 'stars' are that anonymous to those who are covering the cup for a living, to the men and women with 'real' jobs, they must be virtually invisible.

So what's the solution? Simple really. Better promotion of the game, and better promotion of its players, a practice largely lacking at this World Cup. Cricket needs pizzazz, it needs an identity, and above all it needs stars with colorful personalities to grab the casual observer and hold on, because, as we're seeing at this World Cup, rainbow pajamas can only do so much.