Well, that was an exhausting weekend, even if you didn’t move from the sofa. Four absolutely fabulous rugby matches, a dramatic Grand Prix, an excellent cricket ODI, and apparently also some close finishes in the soccer, though I didn’t have time to watch any of it. Now all I need is for the 49ers to win not lose too badly…

However, as Kevin is likely to be reading this, and his rugby coverage is on 24-hour delay, I can’t talk too much about the games. Instead I’m going to talk about minnows.

Odd, isn’t it. Despite the major upsets caused by Ireland and Bangladesh, the minnows were mainly an embarrassment in the cricket world cup. But in the rugby, even though they have mainly lost, they also performed far better than anyone expected.

Touchdown 49ers!

Sorry, where was I? So: minnows good or bad? That’s the question that both the ICC and the IRB are asking themselves. Cricket, I think, has an easy solution: fewer minnows in the ODI world cup, more minnows in the Twenty20. The Twenty20 tournament was a phenomenal success, and minnow teams are likely to be much less embarrassed playing Twenty20 than playing 50 overs. Also having more minnows would make it less likely that one piece of bad luck would knock a very good side out at the group stages of Twenty20. I also very much like the idea of having a minnows ODI world cup in cricket. There are enough good second tier sides to make this a decent tournament than might get good TV coverage. And if entry to the top level world cup was on offer as a prize, it would be a tournament well worth winning.

With rugby it is harder. Part of that is TV-related. The UK TV people are much more likely to show a minnows tournament in cricket than in rugby, because the cricket tournament will feature Ireland and Scotland, whereas the home rugby nations haven’t quite managed to embarrass themselves so badly as to not all qualify for a 12-team world cup. But also the games featuring the minnow sides have been a very pleasant surprise in the current tournament. If would be a shame to throw that away. But on the gripping hand, everyone agrees that the tournament has been too long. It is difficult. I would not like to be one of the people having to make the decision.