The International Cricket Council governs all the multi-national sporting tournaments of the sport. Its four premier events include the World Test Championship, the 50-over World Cup, the T20 World Cup, and the Champions Trophy. Cricket playing nations strive to make their mark in the tournament through various qualification scenarios to make it to the main event.
Most of the events of the International Cricket Council are held at a single host country. In rare instances, can two or three countries co-host a major cricket tournament. The number of teams that can qualify for a given tournament is decided by the International Cricket Council beforehand.
The governing bodies ensure that the proceedings of a major events are smooth and comfortable for both the players and the fans. Hence, in a few tournaments, especially one where there is more than one nation hosting the event, the organizers opt to pre-seeding the teams.
Pre-seeding is a process where the highest ranked teams are pre-determined to reach a certain stage of the event. Hence, their fixtures in the remainder of the event, irrespective of their performance in the league stage, is already postulated. The only intervening and intriguing twist in this process is when an unseeded side upsets the higher ranked sides to finish as qualifiers for the subsequent rounds. In such a scenario, the lower ranked sides swaps the seeding with the higher-ranked ousted side.
Pre-seeding also allows the teams to know who could be their potential opponents and where their matches could be held. This rule has come under scrutiny as recent as the 2024 T20 World Cup. However, the concept of pre-seeding or pre-determination of a match venue has been a common feature of International Cricket Council’s events since 1992.
Critics of pre-seeding have adamantly stated that it gives undue and unfair advantage to certain teams who have a major revenue in the International Cricket Council’s functioning or those teams who are capable of attracting a much larger viewership. The governing bodies have countered this by being steadfast to the fact that the pre-seeding is not a feature for the teams, but for the broadcast viewers.
