 Salaam, welcome to NewsClick. It's been a long time coming, but we have finally halfway through the tournament woken up a little bit and managed to get hold of one of my favorite voices when it comes to covering cricket as far as cricket journalism is concerned. I must admit, this is not a sport that I'm that familiar with, which makes it all the more valuable to have with us on this special episode. Sharda Ogra, who's been covering cricket World Cups since 1996, and covering cricket before that, but it takes a while. You have to pay your dues at local grounds, Sharda, and things like that before you get a chance to cover a World Cup, but a lot has changed since 1996, of course, as far as world cricket is concerned. In a sense, maybe that was the starting point of India's kind of ascendancy. Sharda, give us an update first. What's happening halfway through the tournament, and I'm pretty sure that being a largely Indian audience, people are following the World Cup quite closely, but you're looking at it, obviously, from a different perspective, having covered so many of these events in the past, your approach is probably a little more nuanced than most of us who watch as just pure fans. So what's been the most interesting few points for you at this halfway stage of the ICC Men's World Cup 2023? Yeah, thanks, Siddhanta, having me here. The World Cup, as it's on television, it's a fantastic slick product. You can see it in great music and soundtrack and stuff, but India is doing very well. They've won five of their five matches. Everyone plays nine, so they're past that sort of halfway stage. All most teams need to do is win about six matches, so India is looking good to make the semi-final. This is quite a brutal format in the sense that all teams play everybody. So ten teams in, nine matches for each of them, and the top four are through to the semi-finals, and it's on from there, then it's knocked out. India's performance has been terrific. There have been a lot of dramatic upsets in the tournament. You've had Netherlands scoring a victory over South Africa. You have Afghanistan beating both England and Pakistan. England has stumbled. England has won only one of its five matches. It's lost to Australia, lost to Sri Lanka yesterday here in Bangalore. Like I said, lost to Afghanistan as well, and they've only beaten Bangladesh. And England are defending champions. England were sort of carriers of the flame of this bold, new way of playing test cricket and one-day cricket. They are, in fact, white-ball champions in both the two formats, 2020 and 50 were cricket, and there is massive shock, I assume, running through English cricket at the moment, in the fact that their team has had a fairly bad performance. What the tournament seems to be missing, but what always tends to happen in World Cup in 50 overs, particularly is that everyone's waiting for the close game. Everyone's waiting for that last over or last ball finish, and that's not happened till now. Maybe when we're going through where things matter, there are about four teams now pushing for that fourth spot. So in the top three places, you've got India, you've got New Zealand, you've got South Africa, very fairly secure. In fact, they're going to get through the semis, no issues. The fourth spot is Australia is basically battling for fourth place, which would surprise everyone because they are five-time champions. Australia, Sri Lanka, this is what happens after sometimes I get... Pakistan as well, who had a bad tournament and Afghanistan are in the running for a place in the semi-final. I mean, it'll have to be absolutely mental if they make it. But that's the stage that we're at now. There have been some terrific centuries scored, but the games have largely been very one-sided, either this way or that. Games get over by 8 o'clock, where everyone's wondering what to do the rest of the evening when day-night games finish by 8 p.m., which is what has happened even with the strongest of teams that are battling together. So, because, you know, I think T20, 20-over format has kind of taken over pretty much. What sort of impact has that had on, let's say, England's performance, Sharda? Like you said, it was supposed to be a revolutionary new way of playing, you know, all formats of the game that in a way stems from the fastest or the shortest format of the game. How much of an impact has it had on how some of these teams are performing? Because when I look at a team like Afghanistan play, I feel like their exposure to playing some of the best players, whether it's through the ITL or other T20 games, has led them up to this stage where they are now competing with some of the best teams in the world. And that's definitely a sign of some improvement or some growth as far as the broader context of cricket is concerned. But for teams like England, Australia, who play so much cricket day in, day out, maybe 300 days of cricket in a year, what kind of impact does that have on a team when you go and when you go into a tournament like this that lasts for, you know, 300 odd weeks? That's what I mean. Does that also kind of play into it? Is it hard to kind of switch on and be on for all these nine games that are so spread out? I mean, you would think that switching on at a workup would be absolutely necessary. If you watch the Indians who actually play more cricket days of cricket than any other country, you know, because they'll tell you with long, doleful expressions that you see because when we go and play in the smaller countries it helps them, so the board's always sending us and we're playing so much cricket, et cetera, et cetera. You would have to get ready for this format in the sense you would be able to work, balance out how your players are playing, what their workload is. The most interesting part is not that everyone thought that the younger players coming into this tournament would actually struggle with the longevity of a 50-over cricket. You know, Ola has to bowl 10 overs, the batsman has to bat 50 overs, whatever it is. But England's performance yesterday was completely baffling because they're full of very experienced players and I was watching the game as even though they were 8 down or 7 down all they had to do to try and push their score up from 157 or 157, whatever that was towards, say, 175-250, giving them some chance. Just came back to score, run a ball, but they didn't seem to understand that and the commentators just baffled and said why do they have to try and hit a 6 every ball? You're in deep trouble. By comparison the Sri Lankans came in and said let's play this like a 20-20 game and finish it. You know, there's no pressure. We've got to get this over with. And two young batsmen, Samara Vikrama and Nisanka who just came in and took control of the chase that there was. And so it's quite interesting because England have really gotten to this sort of slump and they've stayed in that space. Afghanistan's revival has been fantastic because this has become a tournament of the top orders. The top orders are able to get going and then bat you through to about 30-40 overs, then you're able to get the kind of a score that your bowlers can defend. If the top order is not everyone has this sort of identity crisis like okay, what do we do now? What do we do within 15 and 40 overs? How do we drag this game out? Because it's literally the reverse of 20-20. There's no dragging out anything in 20-20. It's absolutely get up and go and run. So it's quite interesting how teams have responded differently. But I think if you are able to get a good push at the top sort of a secure base on which to build. Again contradiction in terms of because England did very well for the first five or six overs. No, it gets down for a good amount of runs. And then they got into this hole. So it's been a good work up to see it's why this format is seen as sort of the halfway house between the long version of the red ball version of the game, test cricket and 20 overs because it demands a different set of skills here and you're seeing people try to again adjust to it not just in not just young players but you can see the experienced England team doing it as well. They said England said the air has been bad, the outfield has been bad. All of it is true. But then they played in Bangalore, all conditions were fine and they still had an absolutely richer game. Any sense from what you've seen about the kind of viewership the tournament is getting? How are we doing on that front? I was saying because it's been interesting for me to watch that some of those periods that you were mentioning between let's say 25 and 35, 40 overs when the mind games are happening and I really enjoyed watching Afghanistan play their four spinners and to see how that goes because there was a time when in South Asia particularly spinners sort of had a major role to play in how games went and that seems to have changed quite dramatically in the past few years. Teams like India also, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka are not favouring spin as much anymore. Is that even an accurate observation? It's sort of there and then about. But what's happening is that a lot of these teams particularly if you have to compete very well overseas you need good pace bowling to take with you, same bowling, swing bowling. You need quality to take you and then you can get your spinners to step in. In India particularly there's a big push to getting your fast bowlers working, your fast bowling unit up to scratch when you went abroad and we've seen the results they've been terrific. In the one day game what we're seeing now is that there's some element of spin that's coming into it like Ganesh is playing four spinners. South Africa is also playing spinners. They'll play Keshav Maharaj and they'll play Tabrez Shamsi and they'll try and get someone to bowl a few overs of spin if they need to. They see that it'll help them. The other thing about this World Cup is it's not like it's a World Cup where over a large geographical land mass as well the conditions change from north to south, east to west in terms of how the weather plays its part, what the wickets play like. So teams are having to adjust constantly as they go along. There's no formula. So you do have the sort of spinners coming into it in this middle portion and the middle portion then becomes the point at which you can either completely smash the spinners out of the game or as a bowling player can take over at that point. Your spinners come in like the Indians do and choke the batting and get the wickets. The response to it like you said what's been the response? I think I have to tell you that I was watching the India-Pakistan match on television and it was 3.5 crore whatever on Hot Star or whatever which is a big number and not surprising but it was not an even game it was not even a contest so to speak. What's been disappointing has been to see no crowds in the stadium in non-India games even sometimes in India games not enough crowd like not like standing room crowds only and that I don't think has so much to do on the the public not being interested it has to do on the fact that the tickets are not easily available. It's a massive scramble to still get tickets. It's wretched how that has been organized that has been we should be surprised it's not a new thing but it could have been done much better because it's a world tournament you need to have more fans from overseas coming but there's been no interest in that whatsoever at the top level. And then in the evening after the sun goes down tends to fill up which is nice it's good but why would a broadcaster want to see empty stands at the back of the thing I mean people in Bangalore were really interested in watching the games we had here we had Australia versus Pakistan and we had and the crowd was pretty good it was like 75-80% full but still empty stands at the beginning the tickets have been a mess and it's almost like an insult to the fans who do want to turn up. We'll come back to this so back to it in a bit Sada when we talk about actually the format and 50 over cricket and whether people have mid-week the time to take 8 hours off of work day and come and watch a game of cricket that sort of luxury because I mean it's a Friday today when we're recording this show I think when Australia Pakistan was happening it was a Monday so not that easy for people to also turn up and spend the entire day and now we are being told young people should work 70 hours a week or two I thought in India we are still going for 120 as a minimum while the world what is moving towards 30 hours and 3 days and all of that so just a little bit more on India and Sada because they've looked pretty unbeatable in this squad and I think listening to a couple of podcasts a couple of guys based in Australia and all of that trying to figure out how to beat this Indian team have you figured out what can beat this Indian team except this Indian team itself? I mean the Indian team have looked formidable and impressive and for people of my generation we start to panic when that happens because you're seeing like the bad days coming somewhere which could be absolute rubbish so India have not batted first they've always changed in every match that they've played either voluntarily or they've been asked to change and what happens when their top order gets into a bit of trouble we need to see that so everyone's saying we found a finisher in Shreyas Air and we found a finisher in Shreyas Air and KL Rahul but you have to see what happens if they don't have a really sterling sort of strong performer like Sharma, Rohit Sharma or Virat Kohli at the other end with them that's the thing in the Australia match that they played in the first match that they played there were 2 for 3 and then Virat was dropped by Mitchell Marsh and then we saw in the match here where Pakistan was playing Australia David Warner was dropped and he then went on to produce that massive score crazy, crazy numbers over there so that's the kind of thing that if the top order wobbles what happens India have not been tested in that way that's the one way I think Indians can look at it but then absolutely we have to be on top of their game the injury to Hardwick Pandya is going to make a bit of a difference when it comes to these crunch situations because are you then going to you have to play an extra bowler if Pandya is playing you can play an extra spinner if you want but Pandya is injured now so the balance of the team goes a bit off but they are very well grooved in that sense they are looking very good, they are not looking under pressure at all and they have been able to perform superbly, the matches that they played have also made a difference it's been fine but they are the host team they are entitled to get a few to have a few advantages in some case the venues where they play as well so it's been very good but a knockout match is a knockout match and then you have to have teams that will take that will grab the opportunity and if you are going under the radar and everyone is paying attention on India you have to be there when the chance comes fair enough just on that fourth point that you mentioned in the beginning I think a lot of young people these days follow the English Premier League and the way things have been over the past few years it's always been it's Manchester City wins the league and then everyone else is fighting to be in the top four so you get to play Champions League and all of that very similar in this format when it comes to the World Cup because the 14s go straight to the semis and that fourth place he is looking to be in the sort of interesting battle as it were and I think three of the South Asian teams very much in it for that last spot for the semis how do you see that developing and if you can just focus a bit on Afghanistan in that you know how they seem to have come a long way from I guess in the last five, seven years I mean it's a massive scrap for that last place Australia though are looking the strongest because they are what they call a big tournament team you know when the time comes what happens is they turn up they've got the talent, they've got the players and they have the experience to sort of catch it but what would be fantastic if there were some really crazy upsets which have been there so let's hope this format just keeps offering them Pakistan depend on too many other combinations and permutations for them to go through Sri Lanka just sort of gathering their breath Afghanistan is like this X factor team that now is seeming very very dangerous and are able to their force spinner thing is something that just looks perfect in these situations and in these surroundings and they would have gathered a lot of confidence by the fact that they've had two big wins inside 10 days you know it's not something that they'll say that look the gap is not that big and we can get to these we can get to we can get past these guys whoever it is the Afghanistan story has been dramatic and seen as Cricket's big success story over the last two three World Cups almost they were not here in 2011 2015 and 2017 and they played in a lot of T20 World Cups so they're there about, they've always been knocking at the door we've always wondered about their batting because their bowling has always been strong but you saw Gurbaz play a fantastic they're opener wicketkeeper so it's almost like they'll get much more confidence and they're supremely fit athletes as well the interesting part is that India has offered them greater Noida as their home value if they want to play their matches there that's helped them a lot because there's no place no way they can play anywhere in Afghanistan and host teams there so greater Noida has seen as their home ground that's their Cricketers play in 2020 franchises they're coming through the there's a big, big surge in interest and even since the Taliban have taken over they've realized that we better not touch men's cricket we better not go there because they are literally the single source of sporting pride for the country and all of them know it and I think their global superstar is Rashid Khan he's not leading at the moment but he's certainly very influential and he knows Indian ground like the back of his hand extremely capable performer and a great sort of an example to lead the team forward he's confident, he's English speaking so that helps, he's successful, he's accepted by the world of cricket and all his teammates sort of value behind him they're always a great story of happiness I think in Bangladesh they should be very upset they've not been able to play in terms of what their fans want they're just sort of below that but England follow behind which is England would never thought that they'd be in that spot hmm okay I think that kind of wraps up most of what we wanted to talk about as far as things are concerned on the field but there's also plenty of conversation and because again this is such a spaced out tournament I guess it allows for those conversations to develop one of the things that people tell me in cricketing circles is being talked about is whether it's one format of the same sport too many and the future of 50 over cricket itself being a bit of a question mark how do you see that developing Sharda because also now this is going to be an Olympic sport at least for Los Angeles 2028 and then we'll see how it goes after that but that will be T20 as well so definitely T20 is here to stay and there's a strong lobby for test cricket to be revived and it's happening in a way with the test championship and things like that so where does that leave the 50 over format is it untenable increasingly that's what the discussion apparently is going to be in November early November there's going to be a meeting of all the there's going to be a what is the what is the word a Mandel of cricket will gather and to decide what is to be done about the format I think it does depend on what India's performance ends up like if the Indians win you don't know how this could be marketed what is certainly going to happen which I think it is is that they're going to have to reformat how bilateral one day tournament 50 over tournaments are played because eventually the World Cup is still the World Cup that every team wants to win it's not the 20 over World Cup which is played once every two years how can it be a World Cup if it's come so soon so the once in four year tournament is the one they want to win but it's been played in the wrong format and as in wrong in aircodes format so but you can't just leave it hanging there in the middle of nothing and have nobody playing anything until you just have it pop up every four years it makes no sense there's no context to it at all so I think maybe jigging how that is played will be will be done Sachin Jolkar has always talked about breaking this up into 25 overs from one team 25 overs from the next team and then you go 25-25 again that's his that's been his idea he's happy to talk about it anyone calls him up he'll talk about it or if you're going to change the competition structure around it that have clumps of international tournaments in the middle but where do you fit this into a calendar which is now getting increasingly packed with 2020 franchise leagues which is the money bucket you know so the Olympics is an interesting thing because they waited a long time for it and because major league soccer major league cricket has started in the United States this year that's going to be seen as the driver of attention interest, engine, revenue, ads whatever you know eyeballs whatever to make sure that the format stays stays in the Olympic games because it means money to smaller countries in a large way a lot of other countries I mean Thailand plays women's cricket Papua New Guinea plays men's cricket 2020 as well so for them it means something to be at the Olympics only six teams are going to play in the first in the first Los Angeles games cricket competition after 128 years I think it's happened after 1900 and they played it again in 1928 it's always been about the format who's going to have a test match how do people spend time watching five days of a test match and one third of the Olympics gone how you could have a test match Olympic not happening so similarly with 50 over cricket when it came when it was born in the 70s it was still not seen as short sharp and viable to play but the 24 format seems to be the answer one day crickets fortunes are really in a space at this moment where it's like halfway house you don't know you want to win a World Cup but if you don't want to play the format at all and it's an interesting format because of the fact that it changes the mindsets of people that play 2020 that are saying okay now what you know we don't want to play test cricket but now if you want to win a World Cup you want to be world champions but what about this the test cricket lobby is getting smaller and smaller it's actually you know can you imagine only four countries playing each other in the World Cup and it's just too boring and everyone keeps pointing out to rugby and saying Rugby's World Cup is getting bigger they've got 20 teams and you're still stuck at 10 you're making it smaller so there are all these questions that are happening I want to see what the discussion what they come up with like saying like I'm quoting myself is that cricket and I see cricket I mean establishment the establishment cricket protects what it wants to protect if cricket wants to protect the 50 over format they will find a way to protect if it doesn't they'll find thousands of excuse to get rid of it a bit of bilateral cricket and you know they come up with something it's just simple easy ask any consultant type of company and they'll tell you why you should play it it'll be done like that fair enough and when I guess when the management consultants come it's the cost cuttings that happen first so in the fire sale maybe one day cricket will be lost but we will have cricket at the Olympic Games and that's something to look forward to Sharda in a sense also because you were mentioning how the money will stay within that sort of realm I guess which means that the BCCI and Indian cricket doesn't have so much of a say on it how will the cricket establishment these days it's pretty much the Indian cricket establishment so how do you see them responding because it's been at the Asian Games for some time now and we don't see the top squad going at least the men's team the women's game is a bit different but as far as the men's cricket is concerned so with these new franchises or franchise leagues emerging like in the US which are likely to be again huge money spinners is the sort of power center likely to devolve a bit is it likely to become a bit more decentralized and more inclusive or will the BCCI at some point say ok this is where we draw the line and up to that you can do whatever you want and then that's enough that's an interesting question because along with the majorly cricket the Saudis are interested in setting up for a 2020 franchise surprise and they don't want to get on the wrong side of the BCCI like what happened in golf they don't want that to happen that's another sort of segue I mean a side sort of topic of that where cricket will have to be will have to understand the officials of cricket the rulers the governors will have to understand is that the IOC is not like any other sporting organization the IOC is not the ICC which is currently just an event managing company and their rules are pretty strict so things like in terms of equal participation of women in terms of drug codes in terms of who's coming who's not coming they are it's a fairly absolutely watertight sort of set of conditions that are there you cannot mess with those and if you mess with those then you stay out of it that's what the deal is I was just thinking right now as you are talking about this horrifying scenario where BCCI said we don't want cricket to be in the Olympics and it falls off the map because it doesn't a sense of self importance will get corroded slightly therefore but this is just my wild imagination pay no attention to it so I think that will be a good interchange that will be there and I mean I think if and the players cricketers are just dying to be a part of the Olympic Games for them it is absolutely so when you talk to cricketers about anything they say ha ha cricket to hell but that is an Olympic sport you know olympics ne kia usne nira chopra main like that's like the conversation that you have so cricketers would just give an arm and a leg to be in that parade in the games village so the Asian Games is one thing but Olympics is the olympics most this is like the biggest sporting competition everybody is there but since when players had to say in anything that happens in the cricket ha ha so that's what the scenario is going to be like I think it will work because the enthusiasm for smaller nations to be a part of this to be a part of a slightly larger competition to maybe push for more it should come from say countries like England and Australia that have some clout in world cricket I mean I think the ICC imagination is currently bust they are just trying to get through with this world cup however they can and so it will have to come from there I mean if cricket stepped off the olympics it will be a failure of the Governors as they are at this moment and it will be a loss to actually globalising your game which is what you talk about but you don't put the money where the mouth is mouth is alright we leave it there thank you for watching please share subscribe to our youtube channel share this video of course and right into us let us know what you think will the 50 over format survive in all of the challenges that cricket is facing today and the kind of money onslaught that T20 cricket is bringing so essentially it's like one format of the same sport sabotaging another so it's quite interesting I don't know how many sports in the world this is happening in but yeah so that's it for today from all of us thank you very much goodbye