India’s elimination from the T20 World Cup was confirmed on Sunday when New Zealand’s victory against Afghanistan took the Black Caps out of their reach and turned their final match of the Super 12s, against Namibia on Monday, into a dead rubber. Their elimination is a massive blow to tournament organisers, with India its largest and most lucrative broadcast market, and as well as the team’s weaknesses it has exposed issues with the World Cup’s format and scheduling. India’s first two matches were scheduled a week apart, both played on a Sunday evening to maximise those all-important viewing figures: the first, a hotly anticipated encounter with Pakistan, was watched by around a billion people. But when both were lost in similar style – subdued batting performances and unconvincing bowling displays (they took just two wickets in their first two matches combined) following a lost toss – India stood on the brink of elimination with their tournament only just begun. A full week between games stretched the patience of players who, having gone into the World Cup straight from the Indian Premier League, had by then been living in biosecure bubbles for months. “It’s been a long break for us,” Virat Kohli said before their second match, against New Zealand. “It’s been a lot of time waiting and just doing nothing, really, for us as a team.” By the second Sunday of the Super 12s the group’s three strongest teams had all played each other, Pakistan winning twice, New Zealand once and India not at all. Though Afghanistan had the potential, ultimately unfulfilled, to upset any of them, the remainder of the matches became a procession. In particular the two teams who qualified from the first group stage, Scotland and Namibia, had realised their ambitions simply by getting that far and, once there, proved hopelessly uncompetitive. India would of course have been more comfortable if they had hosted the tournament as planned but conditions in the United Arab Emirates are very familiar to players who had all been involved in the IPL, which has been held in the same venues in one and a half of the past two seasons. But India’s internationals are banned from competing in foreign T20 competitions and, despite hosting the most popular domestic tournament of all, internationally it seemed the game had moved on without them noticing. Though cricket is the second most popular sport in New Zealand, a country of 5 million people, and the most popular in India, a country of 1.4 billion, the Kiwis have beaten India in the semi-finals of the 2019 50-over World Cup, in the World Test Championship final this year, and have now now eliminated them from the T20 World Cup. Needing to win their last group game to secure qualification, they limited Afghanistan to 124 for eight, Trent Boult and Adam Milne outstanding with the ball, before comfortably reaching their target with 11 balls and eight wickets to spare. They will now face an injury-depleted England in the first semi-final in Abu Dhabi on Wednesday, with Pakistan playing Australia in Dubai a day later.