How do you plan the perfect cricket World Cup?

The World Twenty20 format has not been perfect, but it is infinitely superior to the structure for the 50-over competition
Imran Khan lifts the World Cup in 1992
The format for the 1992 World Cup helped produce a memorable tournament. Photograph: Adrian Murrell/Getty Images

Just as you are not really a stand-up comedian until you have been viciously heckled, so you're not really a World Cup until the world has had a bit of moan about your format. The World Twenty20 has been subject to such criticism for the first time in the last week. The basic format, consistent across all four World T20s, is fine: four groups of three supplying a short but necessary preamble before we get down to brass tacks in the Super Eights. The difference this time is that the game between the two biggest sides has sometimes been last, and thus a dead fixture. The solution is simple: keep the same format for the next World T20 but ensure the first fixture in each group is between the two highest-ranked sides. Next stop, the science of rockets.

The complaints about this World T20 got the Spin thinking about the 50-over World Cup, a perennial source of format angst. Across 10 World Cups, going back to 1975, there have been a series of different formats. We've had Super Sixes, Super Eights, groups of four, six and seven in the first stage of the tournament, and even a full league in 1992. Yet none have truly worked.

The Spin is horrified to note that, in 2015, the ICC will persist with the format for last year's World Cup. The 2011 tournament was good fun for the most part, but the never-ending first group stage only worked because England's endearing haplessness infused it with considerable drama. Even then, the eight quarter-finalists were as expected when the tournament started. It took 30 days and 42 games to confirm the bleedin' obvious. It was like a film with a 75-minute first act and 15 minutes for the last two acts.

The tournament was a minor success in spite rather than because of a format that an Observer editorial called "a travesty". And it was still far from satisfactory. By the end of the tournament, the Spin was as spent as it has ever been in its working life. Goodness knows how the players felt.

It's easy to be critical of the ICC – and there will be plenty of time for that in 2015 – but we should recognise the difficulty of its task. There are unique problems in constructing a foolproof format for a cricket World Cup; even so, surely it cannot be beyond the wit of man. After the draining 2003 competition, the Spin had this conversation with Martin Williamson, then the managing editor of He suggested a format that we thought worked perfectly. Sadly neither party can remember what it was. It's as useless as the great lines Jerry Seinfeld wrote down in his sleep and couldn't decipher the following morning.

You can peruse the different formats for each World Cup here. Our favourite was probably 1992, when nine teams all played each other, with the top four going into the semi-finals. Some felt the league stage went on too long, although at 23 days it was a week shorter than the group stages in 2011. And there were only two dead games in the entire tournament – one of which, Zimbabwe versus England, produced one of the great games in World Cup history.

Using such a format is impossible now, because there will always be more than nine teams taking part. There are other issues: for all Bangladesh's improvement, limited-overs cricket generally has an unofficial Super Eight. If you go from the group stages to the quarter-finals, as has been the case in 1996 and 2011, those group games are invariably pointless. The big teams will almost always qualify, so their focus is on making points rather than earning them.

One of the biggest issues in developing a format that doesn't bore everyone to tears is the pervasive influence of both television and the BCCI, the blanket acceptance of which is not a little soul-sickening. India will never be allowed to exit a World Cup after two games, as happened in 2007. What do the ICC think this is, a knockout tournament?

The solution may be simple, with minimal tweaking. You could keep the existing format, but go straight to the semi-finals instead of the quarters. This would ensure that every group game matters (look how tight the groups would have been last year with the top two rather than the top four going through) and would shave a few days off the tournament. It would also imbue the first part of the tournament – the main chunk of the tournament – with the jeopardy that should exist at all stages of a World Cup.

If a few more of the group games are played on the same day, we would be close to satisfying the golden rule of any World Cup in any sport: that it should last no longer than a month. The 2007 World Cup was 47 days, the 2011 version 42 days. Such bloated tournaments are as incongruous as an eight-minute pop song. You should leave the audience begging for more, not for mercy.

Our proposed structure is not perfect. Ideally we would always have quarter-finals, because knockout ties are the essence of a World Cup. But the fact there are eight major teams makes any path to the quarter-finals redundant. And the group stages could produce quarter-finals in nature if not name – such as Italy 3-2 Brazil in 1982, the greatest game in the history of the football World Cup.

One thing's for sure: there has to be a better way. Send your suggestions to the usual address, or post them below the line if you're reading this on the blog, and we'll publish the best three next week.
