The World Cup is over. Australia are the champions! Huge congratulations to them. They were brilliant through the entire tournament. They won every match by a huge margin. They were never challenged. They are they first team to ever win the World Cup three times and they have done it consecutively! Wow – they are truly in a different league from the rest of the teams. And thank you to Sri Lanka, who kept the South Asian representation going all the way to the finals!

Now, let’s come to the ICC – the International Cricket Council who have demonstrated they are nothing if not incompetent. This World Cup was the most pathetic ever. Writing about it makes me so angry because of the pain they have caused the teams, the fans and the damage they have done to the game.

• Length: Who the hell has a tournament for seven weeks?? They are insane.
• Ticket prices: So high that locals could not afford to attend. Every match I attended in the Super 8s had at least half the stands empty. The semi-final matches were also not sold out. Amazing.
• Rules at the stadium: They sucked the joy out of Caribbean cricket – the fans didn’t bring their musical instrument and there was no Calypso. Damn – it was almost depressing.
• Two mile exclusion zone: Fearing terrorism, all ticket holders were bused to the stadiums. The buses never ran on time. People often waited 45 minutes in a bus (I waited in a bus for an hour once!). And if you showed up late, you were out of luck. Huh? I paid for the ticket – I can go whenever I want. In Grenada, people walked 2 miles to the stadium!! What if someone was elderly? Amazing stupidity. In the US, fans still drive to Baseball and Football stadiums. There are ways to ensure safety and comfort for the fans. Oh, and in the midst of all this, in Grenada, I saw Mercedes cars and SUVs pull into the stadium for the ICC bigwigs. They should have been made to experience what the fans had to go through – aarrgh!!!

And finally, today’s sheer stupidity. The Barbados ground has no lights. That means the match has to end before it gets dark. But of course that would be impossible to ask of this incopetent organizing body. At the end of the day, the players were playing in the dark – we could see the players on TV, but when they turned off the camera enhancements to show us how it looked live, I could see almost nothing. The players could barely see each other.

With Australia having pretty much won the tournament (Sri Lanka needed 63 runs required from 18 balls with 7 wickets down!!), the batsmen were offered light (i.e. they could walk off because they couldn’t see anything). Australia assumed they won and celebrated. The scoreboard declared them winners. But oh no! Because of the stupid rules, the batsmen would either have to come back tomorrow to play or come out and play out the overs in the dark. The commentators were completely disbelieving of what was going on. With everyone wanting to get it over with, the Sri Lankans trooped out and batted out the final three overs. And then, Australia won – again.

When Tony Cozier introduced the ICC officials at the prize ceremony, the crowd booed loudly. And rightly so.

Heads are rolling in various cricket organizatons around the world because their teams performed so poorly. I hope heads roll in the Incompetent Cricket Council as well. The ICC should hide their heads in shame at one of the most poorly organized tournaments – ever!