The day England disappeared from the World Cup also turned out to be the day the tournament disappeared up its own rear end. Some have thought the complexities of the qualification system unfathomable. Yesterday the Australians fathomed them, and the result at Old Trafford was a dreadful and shameful game of cricket.
Australia are now in the Super Six, and they may well have taken the West Indians with them - at the expense of New Zealand. The problem was that once it was clear Australia were bound to win, it suited both teams for them to do so as slowly as possible.
The Aussies had to win inside 47.2 overs to go through. They were always likely to do this after they had bowled West Indies out for 110 and got within 19 of victory with almost half their overs left. Then they stamped on the brakes. The game maundered on for another 13 overs, with neither team trying to end it.
Australia wanted to stop New Zealand not out of some atavistic feelings but because of the peculiar workings of the Super Six. A few days ago the consensus was that the system being used in this tournament was all rather elegant; its downside has now been exposed.
Remember that teams who qualify carry through results against the opponents who go through with them. Because Australia beat West Indies but lost to New Zealand they want the team they beat to qualify. Got that? This event being in the Information Stone Age, most spectators won't have done. As you would expect, Steve Waugh did. Ruthlessly, heedlessly, he and Michael Bevan drove almost half the crowd towards the exits and sent the rest into chants of "boring, boring."
Later, both he and Brian Lara admitted trying to use the rules to their advantage but they denied collusion - angrily, in Lara's case. Steve Rixon, the New Zealand coach, said he would have done the same in Waugh's shoes. But he is an Aussie after all.
Rixon's men are now faced with a fiendish set of calculations affecting their game against Scotland today. The point of the tactics at Old Trafford was to make their task as hard as possible by improving West Indies' overall differential. New Zealand probably now have to win by something between 110 and 120 runs if they bat first, and to get their runs in less than 25 overs if they bat second.
It's not quite as simple as that, but life is short. This is nothing to do with Messrs Duckworth and Lewis but something to do with Messrs Net and Runrate. As if cricket wasn't complicated enough. The most amusing outcome will be West Indies getting through, striking form and stuffing Australia in the semi-final.
It's hard to imagine that, though. The poor devils who paid to watch this (forgoing Manchester City) got freezing cold and no apologies. They did see Australia's best bowling performance of the tournament as Glen McGrath recorded a career-best five for 14, including the key scalp of Brian Lara, bowled with a perfect leg cutter that clipped the top of the off stump.
