Men in White

For Indian fans, India's elimination from the cricket World Cup so early in the competition is a crushing disappointment.

For the television channels that bought rights to beam the tournament to these fans, Friday's defeat was a financial disaster.

But for the tournament itself, nothing could have been more tonic than the purging of Pakistan and India, the dysfunctional giants of South Asian cricket.

Instead of these glowering bruisers, the extravagantly gifted Sri Lankans and the plucky Bangladeshis will represent South Asia in the next round, the Super 8.

Since the Reliance World Cup hosted by India in 1987, South Asia's cricketing nations have become more and more influential in the conduct and administration of the one-day game. The elimination of India and Pakistan leaves the World Cup in the West Indies a happier, less toxic tournament

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Some of this influence has to do with cricketing success: since India won the Cup in 1983, Pakistan and Sri Lanka have won it in 1992 and 1996 respectively.

Mainly, though, the balance of power in world cricket has shifted from England and Australia towards the sub-continent for commercial reasons: the dawning realisation that India owns the only mass audience there is for the game.


One-day allure




Cricket was always popular in India, but the coincidence of World Cup success in 1983 and the creation of a national television audience in the early 1980s (Doordarshan, India's sole, government-owned television station at the time, created a pan-Indian network in 1982) expanded and deepened the fan base of the game.

Crucially, this new audience was exclusively drawn to one-day cricket, the shorter form of the game.

Pakistan's elimination from the World Cup also drew angry protests

There were several reasons for this. Limited overs matches were over in a day, they were never inconclusive and they had a gladiatorial quality that Test cricket with its longueurs, wholly lacked.

The arena-like excitement of ODIs was tailor-made for that great South Asian sport, chauvinism.

India and Pakistan had resumed cricket relations after a long chill in 1978, just as limited-overs cricket was starting to take off.

The compulsive need to confront the old enemy led to the creation of a cricket circus in the Gulf sheikhdom, Sharjah, where, on neutral ground, the sub-continent's blood feuds were re-played as one-day tournaments for the benefit of increasingly feverish and volatile audiences.

The fusion of chauvinism and television had two bad consequences: an obsessive fan base that tended to become deranged by defeat and the rise of contemporary cricket's stock villain, the corrupting bookie.

Defeat, especially at the hands of the old enemy, led to a) a suspension of cricketing relations (India stopped playing Pakistan in Sharjah after a sequence of defeats led to allegations of foul play) and b) to attacks on players or their property (Mohammad Kaif's home was attacked in 2003, and Mahendra Dhoni's house was damaged after India was defeated by Bangladesh in their opening match in the present tournament).


Corruption


The rise of the bookie and the phenomenon of match-fixing which nearly destroyed cricket's credibility as a competitive sport, was a by-product of the new South Asian audience for one-day cricket.

It couldn't have happened in an environment where the Test match was the dominant form.

Test cricket is harder to fix. It happens over a longer span, there are more innings, more variables and it never generates the steaming pressure-cooked excitement that leads to frenzied betting in the course of an ODI.

Test cricket's suspense is cumulative, and its metabolic rate too low for villains.

And these bookies, these villains are South Asian - located in India and Pakistan for the most part, countries where the criminalisation of betting has driven the betting 'industry' underground.

The corruption that bookies have brought to the game has had foreign recruits like the late South African captain, Hansie Cronje, but it remains a sub-continental blight.

Already Bob Woolmer's tragic death is being speculatively attributed to bookmakers worried that the Pakistani coach was about to blow the whistle on their racket in his forthcoming book.

Cricket will buckle under the weight of the sullen, thin-skinned nationalism that Indian and Pakistani fans bring to the game and it can certainly do without the bookie-driven corruption that feeds off this perverse enthusiasm.

The elimination of India and Pakistan leaves the World Cup in the West Indies a happier, less toxic tournament; it might even give the fans of these countries the time to actually play some cricket.

Or they could use the break to switch their loyalties to a sport that doesn't bring out the worst in them. Test cricket, anyone?