English cricket’s ex-player and commentator David Lloyd has called on the ICC to refrain from scheduling games between India and Pakistan in major tournaments. The essence of the game is that it is compromised by these fixtures, which have been happening since 2013 at every ICC event.
Lloyd’s remarks were made while discussing issues on TalkSPORT regarding ongoing 2024 T20 World Cup. He argues that such actions are called “fixing fixtures” which manipulates results for commercial purposes in the game thus affecting fairness and quality of competition.
“No not at all,” said Lloyd when asked if doing away with pre-arranged India-Pakistan matches would be a loss. “We talk long and hard about fixing in cricket. That’s fixed. It’s just fixed for a major event. The game itself is an event. You can’t fix it.And that’s only part of what we fix. We fix loads of stuff.In this particular World Cup, you’re just trying to manipulate.It’s just wrong.”
Lloyd also criticized Super 8s stage of the 2024 T20 World Cup’ scheduling where there were no rest days for teams during that round. He also added that tight scheduling negatively affected teams’ performance as well as preparation time.
Moreover, Lloyd raised another concern about inconsistent rules concerning semi-finals, citing how India vs England (semi-final) went without having a reserve day while South Africa vs Afghanistan (semi-final) had one.
“It just isn’t fair (to the teams),” Lloyd noted.” We’re just manipulating the tournament for the benefit of a few. If you look at the TV audience in India, they would watch anything there and anytime. It is a religion.It is the be-all and end-all. They would watch it, so it must have some commercial value: overruling competition itself.”
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The following are five key issues that Lloyd and his fellow pundits on the show stated while talking about this:.
India and Pakistan should not be made to face each other automatically in any tournament. Instead, once they qualify for a particular stage their fixtures should be determined by a draw.
Similarly, there has to be a standard policy applied during the semi-final stage where all teams have reserve days in case of any changes in weather conditions.
Moreover, no pre-determined teams should participate in Super 8 as well as semi-finals. Consequently, only sides that performed better during the tournament should be allowed to qualify.
In addition, matches and venues must be distributed fairly enough so that no team will play all its games at one location while others fly around a lot.
Lastly, he feels that schedules shouldn’t have bias towards particular outcomes. He believes that schedule shouldn’t be influenced so as to favor some results thus ensuring an impartial competition.
In these critical reviews and reforms being suggested for international cricket tournaments fairness is the main objective. Lloyd’s comments are intended to preserve cricket’s competitive spirit among other teams and followers.
