Thank­ful­ly, the ICC (In­ter­na­tion­al Crick­et Coun­cil) Men’s T20 World Cup mer­ci­ful­ly reached its cli­max to­day, with the fi­nal be­ing held at the Kens­ing­ton Oval in Bar­ba­dos be­tween In­dia and South Africa.

Nor­mal­ly, with tour­na­ments, there is that feel­ing of nos­tal­gia, and when the fi­nal is up­on you, there is a bit­ter­sweet long­ing for more. But not this time. I will be wav­ing a rather en­thu­si­as­tic good­bye, as I will be hap­py to see the back of this World Cup.

This World Cup will be etched in mem­o­ry, not for its bril­liance, but for its blun­ders. It will be re­mem­bered for the em­bar­rass­ing­ly small crowds, poor or­gan­i­sa­tion, lock­downs at venues, pitch­es re­sem­bling mine­fields more than bat­ting par­adis­es, and a group stage set­up that reeked of pre­or­dained nar­ra­tives with a pre-de­ter­mined script.

How the ICC set up the group stand­ings be­fore a ball was bowled with the "AI and A2" groups, etc., was a sys­tem as trans­par­ent as a ma­gi­cian's hat. No mat­ter what, it was de­cid­ed that In­dia would play the sec­ond se­mi-fi­nal in Guyana, ir­re­spec­tive of their stand­ings in the Su­per 8. This had to do with view­er­ship in In­dia, as the first se­mi-fi­nal was played at 6 am In­di­an time, while the sec­ond se­mi-fi­nal was at 8 pm in In­dia, a more ide­al time for TV view­er­ship; es­sen­tial­ly prime­time tele­vi­sion. Then, play­ing the last round of games in both the group stage and Su­per 8 stage with the teams that played the fi­nal game, know­ing ex­act­ly what they had to do to qual­i­fy. Had the In­dia vs Aus­tralia game been played af­ter the Afghanistan vs Bangladesh game, would the tac­tics of those teams have changed? Would Bangladesh have known how many runs they need­ed to score in the num­ber of overs to win the game, and/or would Afghanistan have played dif­fer­ent­ly?

The ICC’s shame­less pan­der­ing to In­di­an view­er­ship and their baf­fling de­ci­sion to play cru­cial match­es, with the out­come hang­ing by a thread, where teams knew their qual­i­fi­ca­tion fate be­fore a ball was bowled, all reeks of ar­ro­gance and a lack of crick­et­ing spir­it. Do you re­call what I told you the ‘I’ in ICC stands for? Do you need more proof of their ‘In­com­pe­tence’? Si­mul­ta­ne­ous last-round games, à la FI­FA/UE­FA, seem like a dis­tant dream for the ICC.

The re­al MVP of medi­oc­rity were the pitch­es. I hon­est­ly felt em­bar­rassed as a Trin­bag­on­ian to wit­ness the state of the pitch at the Bri­an Lara Crick­et Acad­e­my (Tarou­ba), which can on­ly be de­scribed as a dan­ger­ous grave­yard for bats­men. Could you imag­ine if that bowl­ing at­tack was Andy Roberts, Michael Hold­ing, Joel Gar­ner, and Col­in Croft? There would have been no need for a fifth bowler. The game would have been called off af­ter four overs tops - two by Roberts and two by Hold­ing. It was, to be frank, a dis­grace. I do, how­ev­er, un­der­stand that the pitch prepa­ra­tion was over­seen by the ICC. Why am I not sur­prised? Any­thing they seemed to touch turned to der­mal tox­i­c­i­ty. Fans crave six­es and bound­aries, not bats­men scram­bling for their lives. Yes, six­es and bound­aries take a toll on the bowlers, but the bet­ter ones use guile, va­ri­ety and changes in pace to get the bats­men out or make them at least think of the type of shots to play.

On that Tarou­ba pitch, it was like a movie where an army was in­fil­trat­ing en­e­my ter­ri­to­ry, and they en­tered an in­fer­no. I thought South Africa’s cap­tain, Aiden Markram, who in­ci­den­tal­ly, I think is a good tac­ti­cian, felt a lit­tle sym­pa­thet­ic to the Afghanistan team by giv­ing Ke­shav Ma­haraj the sec­ond over, as af­ter the first over by Mar­co Jansen, I would have gone straight to Kag­iso Raba­da. As it turned out, Raba­da, who in my view is the best South African bowler, even­tu­al­ly came in­to the at­tack to add to the mis­ery of the op­pos­ing bats­men.

Poor Afghanistan. They came to the se­mi-fi­nal with so much con­fi­dence and sup­port and the ICC’s in­com­pe­tence let them down. Shame on the au­thor­i­ties in Tarou­ba for ac­cept­ing this dan­ger­ous pitch, and dou­ble shame for re­ject­ing the Queen’s Park Oval (Port-of-Spain) in favour of the almighty dol­lar. May the good Lord for­give them as they know not what they do. How­ev­er, I must give Jack their jack­et and com­pli­ment the au­thor­i­ties in Tarou­ba for learn­ing from their short­com­ings in the group stages, as the se­mi-fi­nal was con­sid­er­ably bet­ter or­gan­ised. Ku­dos to all those in­volved with the lo­gis­tics for the se­mi-fi­nal.

Any­way, we do have a fi­nal com­ing up, and I am sure Bar­ba­dos will put on a good show. The one and on­ly Prime Min­is­ter Mia Mot­t­ley will see to it that Kens­ing­ton Oval is ready. I sin­cere­ly hope that they have been do­ing a lot of work on the pitch to get it to play as true as pos­si­ble, with its con­sis­tent bounce and the ball com­ing on­to the bat — a crick­eter's dream, not a night­mare.

At the end of it, the two fi­nal­ists, by their per­for­mances, de­serve to be there as they both have played un­beat­en. South Africa has been lucky on a few oc­ca­sions, but they held their nerve and some­how al­ways man­aged to pull through. Look­ing at their re­sults, they know how to win close games. A one-run win against Nepal, a sev­en-run win against Eng­land, a four-run win against Bangladesh, an 18-run win against the USA and three and four-wick­et wins against West In­dies and Nether­lands, re­spec­tive­ly. They pos­sess an ex­cel­lent bowl­ing line up and that is why teams who bat sec­ond against them even­tu­al­ly find the tar­get tough to achieve.

In Jansen, Raba­da and An­rich Nort­je, they can be a hand­ful on a pitch with vary­ing bounce. If the pitch turns the left-arm or­tho­dox spin and un­ortho­dox spin of Ma­haraj and Tabraiz Sham­si, re­spec­tive­ly, that will be tough to face up to. Their bat­ting is not as strong and much de­pends on Quin­ton de Kock and Markram ear­ly to give the in­nings im­pe­tus, while the mid­dle-or­der pair of Hein­rich Klaasen and David Miller can be de­struc­tive if they get go­ing.

In­dia, on the oth­er hand, has breezed through their games even with Vi­rat Kohli not yet fir­ing. They have the best all-round team in the World Cup and re­main well-led by Ro­hit Shar­ma, both with the bat and tac­ti­cal­ly. Rishabh Pant, at three and Suryaku­mar Ya­dav, at four, are dev­as­tat­ing. In ad­di­tion, with Hardik Pandya and Ravin­dra Jade­ja clos­ing off the in­nings is just what a good bat­ting T20 team does. The bats­men set it up well for their bowlers, and like South Africa, they have bowlers for all oc­ca­sions. The guile of Jasprit Bum­rah, the left-arm pace of Ar­shdeep Singh, the spin of Kuldeep Ya­dav, Ak­shar Pa­tel and Jade­ja and if need be, the medi­um-pace of Pandya.

This fi­nal could be a clas­sic, tense bat­tle be­tween two strong bowl­ing at­tacks, but with a de­cent pitch, there's a chance for some fire­works, too. If the pitch be­haves, ex­pect a thrilling en­counter. I be­lieve it will be a bowler’s fi­nal, as both teams are strong in that de­part­ment. How­ev­er, I am go­ing to stick my neck out for In­dia as I think they might have that ex­tra edge, that X fac­tor, to lift the tro­phy. Here's to an ex­cit­ing fi­nale and a sigh of re­lief as the cur­tain falls on this for­get­table World Cup. May the best team win, and may the ICC learn a valu­able les­son or two from this.

Ed­i­tor’s note: The views ex­pressed in the pre­ced­ing ar­ti­cle are sole­ly those of the au­thor and do not re­flect the views of any or­gan­i­sa­tion in which he is a stake­hold­er.