SYDNEY—For those still paying attention, congratulations on making it this far—your patience will be rewarded now that the Cricket World Cup enters a new phase.

There has been some exciting cricket—there is such a thing—over the past four weeks, but it has been a long, drawn-out process to boil the event down to eight teams from 14, especially when the names of most quarterfinalists could have been set in stone before the World Cup began.

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