The Long Road to T20 World Cup Glory: How Extensive Travel Has Arisen as Another Obstacle for Teams in the Tournament
On top of the subpar nature of pitches in the USA especially, the tiring schedule for certain teams proves to be yet another factor working against them.
The bigger the scale, the farther the travel. This has been the unfortunate reality that multiple teams in the T20 World Cup have been dealt with since the tournament is being hosted across the ever-expansive USA and the Caribbean.
With the stadiums spanning everywhere from the ‘Big Apple’ New York, to the coastal refuges of Florida to southern Dallas, continuous travel across the American landscape itself proves to be a challenge.
Add to the mix the Caribbean, with matches being hosted in Barbados, Trinidad and Tobago, Guyana and Antigua to say the least, it all makes for a logistical nightmare for a handful of teams.
In fact, there are 12 teams who will be forced to change base 2-3 times within the group stage, while 4 teams are slated to travel 4 times within the same span.
The unfortunate four are the Netherlands, Sri Lanka, Scotland, and Bangladesh, who are scheduled to change base four times from the start of the warm-ups till the end of the first round.
Bangladesh will be most unfortunate out of all, as the team is scheduled to travel a whopping 9221 km — starting from Dallas to New York to Dallas again to New York again as well and finally end in Kingstown.
On the other hand, the luckiest ones are the defending champions England, who re slated to play all their initial matches in the Caribbean itself, aiding for easy and short travel — just 505 km of travel to be specific.
Here is a list of the distance that each team has to travel throughout their group stage matches, in descending order (in kilometers):
- Bangladesh – 9,921
- Sri Lanka – 8,097
- Netherlands – 7,380
- Nepal – 4,214
- Canada – 3,922
- USA – 3,922
- Pakistan – 3,922
- Ireland – 3,434
- South Africa – 3,306
- India – 1,717
- West Indies – 1,709
- Afghanistan – 1,521
- PNG – 1,246
- Uganda – 1,246
- Scotland – 1,242
- Australia – 1,195
- Namibia – 924
- Oman – 891
- New Zealand – 623
- England – 505
On top of the subpar nature of pitches in the USA especially, the tiring schedule for certain teams proves to be yet another factor working against them.
In fact, Sri Lanka spinner Maheesh Theekshana spoke out on the scheduling which he believes has negatively impacted the team, after their loss to South Africa.
“So unfair for us, we have to leave every day (after the match) because we are playing (at) four different venues," Theekshana said.
“The flight we took from Florida, from Miami, we had to wait like eight hours in the airport to get the flight. We were supposed to leave at 8 pm but we got the flight at 5 am. It’s really unfair for us, but it doesn’t matter when you play," he added.
Whether the teams like it or not, they do not have a choice but to weather the storm metaphorically and literally as well, as the tournament progresses with every passing day.
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