ICC tourney runs into troubled waters

All matches are scheduled to be played in Dhaka which, along with the rest of Bangladesh, is ravaged by floods and, at the time of writing, under water. In fact, even as the ICC is going to Bangladesh in search of money, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has made a call for immediate international help to the tune of $5 billion.

TOSSED AROUND: The mini-World Cup, as it is now being referred to, has an interesting history. The ICC initially wanted to stage it at Orlando in the United States at Disneyworld (Walt Disney are the ownersof Disneyworld and the sports channel ESPN).

Disneyworld, in fact, is in the process of putting up a world class cricket facility in Orlando and the ICC hope to stage annual cricket tournaments there involving India, Pakistan and the West Indies in a bid to showcase the game at a centre through which six million tourists pass each year.

Of course, telecasting the tournament would have made ESPN richer. (As it is, both Orlando and Toronto would be involved in the staging of the 2007 World Cup to be hosted by the West Indies).

The ICC moved the mini-World Cup away from Orlando and gave it to Emirates Cricket Council, Sharjah. However, last December, they once again decided to move it away, and handed it over to Bangladesh, claiming that it would be a shot in the arm for the game in that country.

ICC, besides spreading the game, hopes to rope in at least $2 million from the event in Bangladesh. However, it is a moot point whether that government would allow such a huge sum to be taken out of the countryduring these times of economic crisis in Asia.

That apart, even if the flood waters dramatically ebb away in the next few days, there is a growing fear that an epidemic of enormous proportion which could lead to the outbreak of cholera, dysentery and the like could swamp the country.

The ICC is mindful of the matter. The next few days could lead to the tournament being shifted out of Bangladesh or even cancelled. The latter looks more likely as even a slight shift in dates would affect the Ashes tour (involving England in Australia) and the Sharjah Cup (India, Sri Lanka, Zimbabwe) and may be even the series between India and New Zealand and the one between West Indies and South Africa.