The ICC will examine Mickey Arthur’s allegation that
the October 14 World Cup match between India and Pakistan in Ahmedabad felt
more like a “bilateral series” game, but it is still optimistic that
the competition would be viewed as “outstanding” after it is
completed.
After his team’s seven-wicket defeat, Arthur
acknowledged that the partisan audience had an impact on the team because there
was so little Pakistani support at Ahmedabad’s jam-packed Narendra Modi
Stadium. No Pakistani fans had been granted permission to cross the border,
thus they were conspicuously absent from the stadium. Few Pakistani journalists
and Pakistani-origin supporters who live in or are citizens of other nations
arrived in time to cover the game.
“Look, I’d be lying if I said it did [not affect
us],” Arthur said after the match. “It didn’t seem like an ICC event,
to be brutally honest. It seemed like a bilateral series; it seemed like a BCCI
event.”
Asked to respond to Arthur’s comments, ICC chairman
Greg Barclay seemed to downplay them as the kind of criticism that is par for
the course at such tournaments. “Every event that we have, there’s always
criticisms from various quarters,” Barclay was quoted as saying by AFP in
Mumbai, where he was attending the International Olympic Committee Session, which
voted for T20 cricket’s inclusion in the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics.
“Things that perhaps we’ll take away and try to
work on, try to do better… so this event’s only [at] the start. Let’s see how
the whole thing plays out and we’ll go away and we’ll review what could change,
what we can do better, how we can improve World Cups and the general offering
around cricket.
“We will just take it as it plays out, get to the
end of the event. I’m satisfied that it will still be an outstanding World
Cup.”