That World Cup over Ashes debite made me cringe. The Ashes is the biggest rivalry in cricket if not the biggest in sport. Firstly it is in the only format that matters, ODI and T20s are great and all but they are nowhere close to Tests. The sad truth is people (Especially in Asia) arent interested in tests anymore as they are to long, thats probably why Poker didnt understand why anyone would be interested in batsmen blocking for 5 days instead of hitting "Masive SIXES out da grond" which is really annoying to me because if it carries on like this Test matches might not be around by the time I could be able to play them
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Actually Ashes is not even the biggest rivarly in Cricket, let alone the biggest rivalry in all of sport. Indo-Pak rivalry far far exceeds the Ashes series. The Ashes is just a sporting rivalry, Indo-Pak matches has all the history and bitterness and political tensions, the scars of partition and the 4 wars fought between the nations all spill into it. You cannot even start to compare all this to a mere sporting rivalry. In a major indo pak match/series two nations (not just cricket followers) come to a standstill. In the Ashes, nothing even remotely comparable happens. Hell a majority of the English pop doesn't even know there is an Ashes series going on, or do not care at all for the sport of cricket.
While I do agree that tests are the biggest test of an individual player, but apart from random series that come around every year or so, there is nothing really to win in tests, as a team. You are only playing for the #1 ranking, but in no sport does the #1 ranking mean more than winning real competitions. Yes there is the #1 test ranking, and when its your team on top, its a great feeling, but good luck to anyone who can figure out how those rankings work. The test rankings are not a 'real' competition by any stretch of the imagination.
All sports are geared towards winning 'real' competitions, and the World Cup is the biggest competition there is in cricket. That is why it is so important and to everyone (except the Eng fans maybe), the biggest prize in the sport. Just think how ridiculous it would sound if Germany said we don't care about winning the World Cup, we just want to be the #1 team in the FIFA rankings !! The FIFA rankings are bollocks as are the ICC Test and ODI rankings and not a real competition at all. Real glory is winning competitions and not being ranked whatever, especially on some table no one understands in the first place.
Even in Tennis where the #1 ranking matters a great deal more and has a lot more prestige attached to it than the ICC Rankings or FIFA Rankings, any player would rather win the grand slams than be ranked #1. Real glory in any sport is winning competitions, sadly in test cricket (which is the biggest test for individual players) there is no 'special' competition to win. Just bilateral series after bilateral series which are effectively all on the same pedestal. Yes there are some which are harder to win and some easier, but as far the series themselves go, they are all on the same pedestal.
The Ashes is just another bilateral series, yes one with a lot of history and very rich history infact, but its just Eng vs Aus series. We get the history, but apart from that how is it different from SL vs Pak or Ind vs SA or hell Ban vs Zim? Yes it has a history but as a competition it has the same relevance as any of other series I mentioned. SL beating Pak doesn't make it world champions anymore than Eng beating Aus make them world champion, and to the rest of the world Eng playing/beating Aus is no more a special event than SL beating/playing Pakistan. There are many such series every year. The World Cup though is a special event, and one that comes around once in 4 years.
Also don't kid yourself that teams in Asia don't care for test cricket. Thats utter nonsense. India were so great in the ODIs but this tour is still going to be remembered as a disaster. The ODI series will not matter in a few weeks and everyone will only remember the test loss. This would not happen if tests didn't matter.
I do understand how the English fans are so obsessed with the Ashes. It predates the World Cup by 100 years and for generations the English cricketers have been brought up wanting to win the Ashes, before there even was a world cup. So that mentality still remains with them. What the issue is though that just because the Eng fans have the Ashes, they expect everyone else to also not think of the World Cup as the biggest prize in sport, and think of Ashes (which 8 out of the 10 teams dont even play), as the be all and end all of cricket. That is not going to happen.
Its not that the rest of the world doesn't get the importance of the Ashes for England, its actually the Eng fans who don't get why the World Cup is the biggest prize there is on offer in Cricket. Eng can either live in their Ashes centric world of the 1960s, or join the rest of the cricketing world in the 21st century of cricket.
Even if one assumes that Ashes is most important to Eng fans, then even so surely, the World Cup be the next most important thing there is in cricket, even to Eng fans. So I definitely don't buy the 'donot care' attitude from the Eng fans about the World Cup, because it is ODIs and not tests.
