Did the new rule spoil India's party?

India got knocked out of the World Cup. But fans must be wondering about the present grouping system employed in this World Cup. The groups allotted to teams had a lot of effect, especially on India.

How can all the teams who won both the matches in the first round play in the same group in super 8′s? Surely, ICC needs to amend this rule in further tournaments. This is a strange rule. First and foremost, teams who won both the games in the group stages should be in a relatively easy group and they should play with teams who won just 1 game in the group stages. But this present ranking system to classify groups has completely done injustice to several teams.

This present system makes first round matches akin to dead rubbers. It’s as if the group stages are like practice matches and the tournament only starts from the super 8′s. A team which won both the games in group stages should have more advantage than teams who won just 1 game. And I don’t understand the super 8′s title itself. Why is it called Super 8′s when you only play 3 other teams in each group? All 8 teams should be grouped together. Yes, that would mean the format would be longer, but one match against each team would be played, which would make things more challenging, and help produce a better result.

The grouping was bad, no doubt about that. They could have compensated in a better way by introducing 2 more matches. The top team from each group, Australia and Sri Lanka, could go into the semifinals while the second-placed Pakistan should have played third-placed England and third-placed India should have played second-placed WI to determine the other 2 semifinalists.

Rules like this don’t give you the best winner. For example, West Indies have just won 2, lost 2 and drawn 1 but they are through to semifinals while India who played brilliantly but just had 1 bad day at the are not. As it is, T20 is lottery cricket and this present rule is making it even worse.

In a event like the World Cup, no match should be a dead rubber.

My solutions for this would be:

Groups should be classified based on results in the group stages and teams who win both games should carry the points to super 8′s with them.

OR

The World Cup should start from the super 8 round and minnows should be excluded.