Four funerals were held simultaneously in Ireland, Kenya, Canada and The Netherlands. A cricket bat and a white cricket ball were dispatched to ashes and an eulogy to greed read out at the ceremony.

The tragic circumstances which surround these funerals are bedrocked in the false camouflage that the World Cup which takes place every four years is too long with 14 teams so four lesser endowed teams have been struck dead. As an eloquent testimony to the dereliction of duty in promoting the sport, a priority encompassed by the role of the ICC as the custodian of cricket, the decision is difficult to beat. It speaks volumes for their desire to promote cricket.

Compare that to the 32 teams taking part in the soccer World Cup for a much longer period and you realise that the keepers of the faith, like Brutus, are also knifing the very game that allows them their lavish lifestyle and their inflated importance. 

Instead these four nations, instead of celebrating their mature performances have now been robbed of all incentive to spend the next four years getting even better. They will automatically deteriorate and shrivel into nothingness.

Against the backdrop of the associate teams battling it out in the UAE at the moment of writing, the incredible decision to dump these four is like a death sentence to all those at tier two who might want to come up and be someone. The message is clear: we, the authorities have no time to waste on people no one wants to come and watch. If there is no clicking of the turnstile and no ads eating into overs on the TV we don’t have the patience. You would think that, logically, the ICC would want to take the game onto the global circuit yet there is an active negative movement to stunt it.

So as far as this great sport is concerned you now have the 8 VIPS of which two (Zimbabwe and Bangladesh are relatively poorer in talent) are suspect, then you have the dead foursome who gave us a good visual treat in the 2011 tourney and the rest who will rot at the bottom of the cricket food chain because someone in his misplaced wisdom pulled the ladder away.

Since there can be no logical explanation for crucifying cricket what is the illogical reasoning?

I cannot guarantee it but it is directly linked to India and the enormous wealth that stems from a billion fans. Add the other three sub-continental nations and you have an unending torrent of money so who needs to worry about the bigger picture. As far as revenue is concerned it is already a 70 mm Cecil DeMille production.

Such is the arrogance of the committees that run global cricket that they truly do not even want to make the effort to encourage the game beyond these boundaries. For them, the sight of half empty stadiums are an eyesore, an unnecessary embarrassment that they can do without. After all, with the IPL as an added two-month circus each year who cares if talent withers and dies on the vine in The Netherlands or Ireland doesn’t come to the party.

The stifling of cricket will occur. The game has been placed in jeopardy by this horrific and shortsighted decision. All empires ultimately collapse and this is no dire warning, it is plain common sense. You can have your Faustian 20 years and be blinded by the dazzle of your good luck when it is raining lucre maybe even more that a score but the devil will win and the sun will go down and the night will come riding in. That is a fact of history because when you cut off the rungs that is a ladder going nowhere.

You hear the bell toll. I do.

(Courtesy The Khaleej Times)