Should you want a quick update on the state of world cricket, you need not do more than tune in to the final of the ICC (International Cricket Council) World Cup Qualifier in Harare this afternoon. Eight teams have already qualified for the 2019 World Cup, to be hosted by England and Wales — the hosts plus seven top teams in the ICC One Day International (ODI) rankings. To their ranks are now added the two finalists of the Zimbabwe tournament, the West Indies and Afghanistan.
Shift in centre of gravity
In that equation, the matchup telescopes the shifting centre of gravity of cricket. West Indies, winner of the first two World Cups in 1975 and 1979, for long the game’s gold standard, a team that gives cricket a special historical context, but now escaping relegation only through the paces of a qualifying tournament. And Afghanistan, cricket’s latest minnows-come-good, uniting a war-torn country around cricketers who mostly picked up their skills in the refugee settlements in and around Peshawar, but now spoilt for choice as India and the UAE offer them stadiums for “home” games. Together, they will test the capacity of cricket’s world powers to rise to the spirit of the game. Will they do enough to arrest the declining fortunes of West Indies cricket, and to grow the game in countries such as Afghanistan? Will they look beyond the dictates of television audiences and bend instead to the interests of the sport?
Guns and more
Take the case of Afghanistan first. The literature on Afghan cricket is still sparse, and the 2015 volume, Second XI: Cricket In Its Outposts, by Tim Wigmore and Peter Miller, remains a must- read to recap the new ambitions that should drive cricket, and to understand how the ICC has failed to rise to them by limiting the 2019 World Cup to just 10 teams. Writing about the moment when Afghanistan had qualified for the 2015 edition, Wigmore quotes the then chief executive of the Afghan Cricket Board telling him: “One of the army commanders came to congratulate the team. He told me that it was the first time that both the Taliban side and our side were shooting, but not at each other. There was shooting in the air to celebrate the success of the Afghanistan national team.”
In 2010, Hillary Clinton, as U.S. Secretary of State, had already cited the Afghan cricket team as a model for the reconstruction effort in the country, explaining to her cricket-ignorant compatriots what it had meant for Afghanistan to qualify for the World Twenty20 championships. But cricket’s green shoots in Afghanistan are more than simply a good news story around which the strife-torn country could rally — for a sport that’s reached the limits of its expansion along the imperial route, i.e. dating back to British colonial rule, Afghanistan’s embrace shows how cricket’s new spheres of popularity can extend beyond South Asia. A player from Nepal, for example, has made it to the Indian Premier League. Shouldn’t India do more, as the MCC did in olden times, to host teams from the UAE and China, from Nepal and Papua New Guinea? (Included in Second XI is an older piece by Gideon Haigh on the unique passion for cricket in Port Moresby.)
The World Cup is the stage where new teams announce their arrival, where they begin their journey to full Test-playing status. Ireland did so in 2007 when it defeated Pakistan, in 2011 when it got the better of England, and in 2015 of the West Indies. Afghanistan caused its own upset in the 2015 World Cup by beating Scotland. Both Afghanistan and Ireland subsequently acquired Test-playing status, just as Sri Lanka and Bangladesh did on the back of their own surprise victories in World Cup matches of the seventies and nineties, respectively.
But is this space closing? With the ICC bringing down the number of teams in the 2019 edition to 10 in a return to the league format, so that all teams play each other and so that India XI, with the huge broadcast fees it brings, play a minimum of nine matches, there is little space for a minnow to squeeze in and shine.
The Caribbean calls
As for the West Indies, the literature underscoring its exceptional place is vast. In a foreword to Simon Lister’s recent Fire In Babylon: How the West Indies Cricket Team Brought a People to Its Feet , the great Clive Lloyd ties the volume to those by C.L.R. James, Hilary Beckles, etc. He writes: “It sounds simple, remarkable even, but when you consider our painful history, the bitter impositions forced upon those who came before us and the particular ordeals that the inhabitants of the Caribbean have had to overcome each day of their lives, you can understand why winning matches for the West Indies meant so much to us all… we represented a people who could make a difference. As the great writer C.L.R. James put it, we had entered the comity of nations… My great hope is that today’s West Indian cricketers can somehow absorb that strength too.”
Once West Indies cricket gave the global game the strength of conviction; today the global game must help West Indies cricket revive itself.
