After four weeks and 40 matches, the World Cup has crawled its way to the quarterfinal stages. With some notable exceptions, especially England and its wild fluctuations in form, the 2011 World Cup has been a torrid affair with subcontinental slow-turning wickets known historically as bowlers' graveyards offering little to fans seeking excitement.
World cricket's marquee tournament is in danger of handing its crown over to the impudent child of the 50-over format, the Twenty20 game that is pulling in crowds around the world.
The International Cricket Council has partially recognised this, agreeing to slash the number of teams in the quadrennial tournament from 14 to 10 for the 2015 edition, effectively excluding the Associate nations like Kenya, Netherlands, Canada and Ireland.
After four weeks of qualifying matches, the world's top eight teams have predictably qualified for the last eight places in a World Cup that will still carry on for another two weeks.
The ICC's T20 World Cup, on the other hand, is contested in 16 days at a rate of two games a day and is now being held every two years. The explosive nature of the 20-over format has seized the attention of fans around the world.
T20 makes the 50-over game look painfully slow. The structure of the ICC competition does not help, but there is little doubt that T20 does away with elements of the 50-over game that can be dull.
Overs 20 to 35, for instance. What's the point of them? Teams concentrate on ticking the scoreboard over with singles, happy to score at four or five runs an over and conserve wickets for the big heave in the last 10 overs or so.
The ICC has fiddled so much with power plays in an attempt to liven up the game that fans no longer know what's going on and fielding restrictions are amazingly complicated.
That's why the ICC appears to be quietly condemning the 50-over tournament to the fringes of cricket, especially considering attempts to introduce a global test championship, aimed at highlighting the five-day games.
South Africa batsman Jacques Kallis, who excels in all forms of the game, said T20 has had a deep effect on players.
"There is no doubt that T20 has changed not only the way ODI cricket is played but the way test cricket is played, too," he said. "Players take a lot more risks now when chasing and when run rates get up to eight or nine, teams don't panic anymore because they know they have chased it down in T20 cricket."
"I think T20 has been a revelation for the game. It has made the batters play more freely and with a lot more open minds and a lot more new shots have come up," he said, adding that bowlers have developed new skills because of T20 cricket.
The advance of T20 has its victims. They are the "Associate" members that are often the whipping boys at World Cups. Excluded from the next World Cup and ineligible for test cricket, those countries will struggle to improve unless the ICC gives them more touring opportunities against top countries. After cutting the Associate members from the World Cup, the ICC suggested the Twenty20 format was the ideal international environment for them.
Pakistan captain Shahid Afridi is pleased to see changes to the World Cup.
"I think a tournament of 10 teams will be more competitive and we won't see many one-sided games," he said, "so it's a good decision to reduce the teams from 14 to 10."
Kenya's Jimmy Kamande disagrees, saying the Associate countries need the tough competition to improve. "One thing I know for sure is that if we keep playing against the Test-playing nations or their 'A' sides the performances will be there," he said. "But the thing is after this World Cup you might go and never see these teams again so it becomes very difficult. If we're going to prepare to play Australia again in the next five or 10 years it's going to become very difficult for us."
Sambit Bal, editor of the cricinfo website, disagrees with critics of the World Cup, saying staging it in the cricket-mad atmosphere of India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh had helped.
"The cricket hasn't been of consistently high quality," he said. "In fact, matches have often been exciting because teams and players haven't been good enough to hold on to dominant positions."