Spectator Sport: Does anyone care about the cricket world cup?

It seems churlish to be having a bitch just when two enthralling Test series are being played out in Australia and South Africa. And how enthralling they are too, by the way, the SA-India series being if anything even better than the Ashes. The sight of South African bowlers really having a go at Indian batsmen is the most pulsating drama in world cricket. And as for the Ashes, wasn’t England’s 517-1 declared one of the most astounding stats from last year? And that was scored not in Chittagong or Bulawayo, but in Brisbane against the Aussies. It’s a score that properly belongs in a battered Wisden from the 1930s. Both these great series, with their largely packed grounds, have been a fantastic advert for the five-day game: not surprisingly, the first two Tests this summer between England and India at Lords and Trent Bridge are already sold out.

But it’s not the five-day game that’s the problem. In case you hadn’t noticed, the cricket world cup is about to unwind itself before a less than adoring audience. The sport’s governing body, the ICC, has always had an unerring eye for the best way to bore the daylights out of us, while trying to rake in as much cash as possible, and this is a real cracker. It kicks off in midwinter, on 19 February, and finally staggers to a close in the spring, 2 April in fact.

I have never quite got the point of the cricket world cup. Football, rugby, yes of course: they represent the culmination of something and generally tell you who is the best in the world. Cricket’s version is just another round of limited-over matches, among many, and on the day anything, as we all know, can happen.