How the ICC has got the World Cup wrong
The Cricket World Cup, which was meant to be a celebration of the game, is proving to be a depressing example of how not to organise a major sporting event.
There are many in cricket, some involved in the administration of the game around the world, who are quite angry about the way things have been handled in the West Indies.
When the England and Wales Cricket Board meet at Lord's on Monday, I am told some members will take the opportunity to voice concerns about the tournament to chairman David Morgan, who flies out to Barbados the following day.
When I spoke to him at Lord's while Sussex played MCC in the first match of the English season, Morgan, who wants to become the next ICC chairman, admitted that the World Cup format probably needed to be looked at.
India and Pakistan departed the seven-week event after two bad results, and some of the iconic matches of previous World Cups like India v Pakistan, England v India or Pakistan, Australia v India and Pakistan have not taken place.
Of course, it could be argued that Ireland beating Pakistan or the rise of Bangladesh are just the sort of occurrences that make a tournament special, much like the emergence of South Korea in the 2002 football World Cup.
The difference is that football fans were not deprived of games between established giants of the game such as England v Argentina and England v Brazil.
Any good sporting tournament, meanwhile, requires the hosts to do well.
The organisers could not do anything about the poor performances by the West Indies team, but ticket prices have meant much of the Caribbean population cannot afford to see the games, something that could be have been avoided.
When I put this to Morgan, he neatly deflected the question saying this was not the responsibility of the ICC. His point was ticket prices were set by the local organising committee.
Yet talk to the local organisers and they say it the ICC who have imposed the conditions which made their lives difficult. As one insider put it everybody is playing the blame game - a sure sign that things re are not going well.
True, nobody could have anticipated the dreadful murder of Bob Woolmer which has overshadowed this event and will permanently be associated with it.
Even here, however, the ICC has not helped by totally withdrawing from the scene where the crime took place saying it was now purely a police matter and they had no responsibility for the investigation.
This is true enough, but the murder took place during their event and such abdication of responsibility shows an organisational weakness which is truly worrying.
This worry is shared by many in the cricket world and will feature heavily as people look through the wreckage of the tournament a full two weeks before its finale.
That we have started this process already says much about the lessons that cricket needs to learn.
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