Sport’s age of excess: tournaments get bigger, but will they get better? | Sport

We have entered an era where World Cup tournaments feel like the equivalent of a four-hour director’s cut: brilliant but flawed, with too many throwaway scenes before the thrilling denouement. The men’s Cricket World Cup took 38 days and 45 matches to whittle 10 teams down to four semi-finalists – which, astonishingly, was 10 days longer than the entire 2022 Fifa World Cup in Qatar. Meanwhile its rugby union equivalent needed a month and 40 games to shave 20 countries to eight. And yet we ain’t seen nothing yet.