Pre tournament hype of ICC World Cup 2011 in the form of advertisement through print and electronic media has looked very spectacular and millions were eagerly looking forward towards the event. 14 teams, 43 days and 49 matches and nothing could have been more spectacular but in reality people are going to forget the tournament very soon after the finals.
The earlier editions of the World Cups played during 1983 to 1992 is remembered even till today while the ones played from 1996 onwards are forgotten and the simple reason for that was the earlier editions hardly had meaningless matches and one must say ICC are solely responsible for meaningless matches by including minnows merely to increase the numerical strength of participants and to prolong the tournament in terms of number of days.
Let us look at the matches gone by in which all the non test playing minnows were comfortably trashed and there were no surprises whatsoever. The players of test playing nations were the only ones happy with the arrangement as they got chances to improve their career averages by picking up free runs and free wickets. To be honest Netherlands gave a real surprise and ran England really close and that has made ICCs task that more tougher for the next World Cup.