Chris Rattue: Go England - Cup needs good battle

England captain Eoin Morgan leading his team warming-up. Photo / Mark Mitchell

Come on England. Dig deep, find an Ian Botham-like spirit, and get this Cricket World Cup humming against New Zealand.

England look ripe for a good kicking and while that would satisfy the Kiwi sporting blood lust, yes sir, a cake walk in the Cake Tin tomorrow is not what this tournament needs.

A soft victory won't do New Zealand any good either - after an unconvincing win over Scotland, Brendon McCullum's troops will benefit facing intense pressure that was missing against Sri Lanka and the Scots.

So far, this World Cup has been a big bash, with one team bashing the other. Throw in the wild hitting, and it has the feel of an exhibition sport, like baseball's home run derby or basketball's slam dunk competition.

Fifty over cricket is supposed to be nail-biting fun. But the games have been so one-sided that one of the most memorable moments was a catch ... by a spectator.

The audience is playing its part, cheering in all the right places, and the atmosphere emanating from some grounds has been amazing. The clash in Adelaide between India and Pakistan sent shivers up the spine, and the football-style player reactions told how much the game meant to them. But from a neutral standpoint, yet another game fell flat in the end.

The happy-clappy business will last only so long, especially with the ridiculously long gap teams have between games. To steal the newest official cricketing term, the tournament is about to become a slog.

This World Cup is crying out for the real sporting drama of a helter-skelter last over thriller. Hopefully the day-night atmosphere can work a bit of magic in Wellington.

An England side smarting from criticism.

A New Zealand team dealing with expectations almost unheard of in this country.

Something special just might be in the wind.

ICC on right track ... sort of We're a hard lot to please, the public. One minute a sport is not entertaining enough. The next minute, there is too much going on. Anyway, here goes on the Cricket World Cup.

The ICC is on the right track reducing the number of teams in the 2019 World Cup from 14 to 10 - there are too many lopsided and dead contests under the current format. Critics say the ICC has made a mistake if it wants to spread the game, but there aren't 14 good enough teams to play in a World Cup so it loses momentum. A 10-team format still leaves room for a couple of lesser lights.

Here's the catch, though. The 2019 World Cup will have about the same number of games and take the same time to complete as the current tournament.

Please, no. A-six week tournament is too drawn out. One of the main advantages of reducing the number of teams should be to make the World Cup more compact.

There are other tweaks the ICC can contemplate.

The obvious one is to remove or reduce the batting powerplays which place restrictions on where fielders can be stationed. The one-day game is so heavily loaded in favour of batsmen anyway that it is the bowlers who deserve respite. The onslaught is gaining such pace that I would argue against any fielding restrictions at all.

An indication of how far the game has moved comes from the standard television descriptions of two heavily used leg-side shots which are referred to as slogs - slogging used to be a derogatory term in cricket. Big-hitting or slogging is so commonplace that the thrill of watching it is fading. To a traditional cricket fan, many of the shots look ugly and the results often exceed the skill used thanks to the huge sweet spots on modern bats.

To be fair to cricket though, getting the balance right is difficult. Better to err not on the side of caution in the short-attention-span age.

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