THE eleventh Cricket World Cup, which began in Australia and New Zealand on February 14th, consists of 42 largely meaningless games, followed by 7 important ones. To understand why this is, consider what happened in the 2007 rendition of cricket’s biggest tournament, which was held in the West Indies. It was a financial disaster because the Indian team, traditionally a poor traveller, was knocked out in the early stages. As a result, most of the world’s cricket fans switched off their television sets. This (perfectly sporting) calamity cost Indian broadcasters millions of dollars in lost advertising revenues, and seriously embarrassed the cabal of Indian politicians and businessmen who run the world’s second most popular game—in India and, increasingly, everywhere. To ensure no repeat of that disaster, this year’s World Cup tournament is designed to ensure the biggest teams, and especially the Indian team, stay in—and so millions of Indian television stay switched on—for the longest possible time. Indian cricket fans might consider that rather demeaning: their heroes, after all, are the reigning world champions. Yet their triumph at the 2011 World Cup was largely because it was played on Indian pitches, which handed the Indians a big advantage, and, despite beating Pakistan in their opening game on February 15th, they are now in poor form. The 14 participant teams have been split into two groups, each of which include four front-rank cricket sides, such as Australia and India, and three minnows, including Afghanistan and Ireland. The first 42 games will be played within these groups. Only in the quarter-finals, for which all eight front-rank sides will almost certainly qualify, will the competition get serious.

If India has the commercial heft to shape international cricket, why are its cricketers not better? Cricket, after all, has an almost monopolistic hold on the sporting affections of India’s 1.2 billion people. According to a survey by an Indian think-tank, 80% of Indians under the age of 25 followed cricket “to a great extent” or “somewhat”. By contrast, New Zealand has a bit over 4m people, who mostly prefer rugby to cricket, yet their cricketers have a good chance of winning the World Cup. The explanation for India’s underperformance is complicated; it has to do with malnutrition and poverty, as well as bad sports administration, and an elitist cricketing culture that favours batsmen over the hardworking attacking bowlers required to succeed abroad. But this giant shortcoming is clearly representative of India’s broader failure to harness the talents of its giant population. Indeed, its economic and cricketing failures are for partly the same reasons—albeit that, in both areas, India’s record is improving.

It is easy to grumble about India’s growing influence in cricket, and many cricket fans (including Indian ones) do. Given the immensity of the Indian cricket market, there will be no end to it, however—or not until Indian cricket starts to face serious competition from other sports, such as football. This, of which there are also early signs, might reduce India’s determination to control world cricket a bit, which no serious cricket fan would mourn. But they might miss some of the effects on their game of Indian money.

Dig deeper:

Why Indians love cricket (February 2014)

Which is the better sport: cricket or baseball? (November 2014)

How to tamper with a cricket ball (October 2013)