Cricket's global tournaments have used group stages, round-robins, super stages and knockouts in varying combinations, and the format rarely survives two editions unchanged. The instability comes from three requirements that cannot be satisfied simultaneously.
Fairness argues for more matches
Cricket has high variance. A single match can turn on a toss, a dropped catch or an hour of rain, so a short tournament frequently eliminates the strongest side.
A full round-robin, in which every team plays every other, reduces that noise substantially and produces a table that reflects the sides fairly.
The cost is length. A round-robin among a large field runs for weeks and asks players and audiences to sustain attention across many low-stakes fixtures.
Broadcasters need guaranteed fixtures
Tournament revenue depends overwhelmingly on television rights, and rights are valued on the number of matches involving the largest audiences.
A pure knockout risks eliminating a major side early and removing a large share of the tournament's commercial value in a single afternoon.
Formats therefore tend to guarantee a minimum number of matches per team, which is a commercial requirement dressed as a competitive one.
Smaller nations need access
Associate teams develop by playing established sides, and global tournaments are among the few occasions on which those fixtures occur at all.
Reducing the field improves match quality on paper but removes the development pathway, and the gap between established and emerging nations then widens.
Expanding the field creates mismatches that broadcasters dislike, which is the direct collision between the second requirement and the third.
Hybrid formats attempt a compromise
Group stages followed by a second group phase attempt to combine guaranteed fixtures with a reduced field, carrying results forward to avoid replaying matches.
Carrying points forward introduces its own complexity, since a team's position depends on results from a stage that has already finished.
Spectators find such structures hard to follow, and a format that requires explanation loses casual viewers the tournament was designed to attract.
Every revision creates the next complaint
A format criticised for eliminating a major side early is replaced by one criticised for producing meaningless fixtures in the middle weeks.
The reverse correction then follows, and the cycle repeats, because the underlying trade-off has not changed and cannot be designed away.
What actually shifts between editions is which of the three requirements the governing body has decided to prioritise this time.
