India will be the team to beat with Rohit, Virat as facilitators

Apologies for starting on a slightly negative note. The Champions Trophy was a bad idea.

- Sanjay Manjrekar

It was a good idea when the ICC decided to discontinue it, realising that 50 overs cricket was losing its appeal with the fans, even fans of white-ball cricket. Why did they revive the Champions Trophy when there was every indication that 50 overs cricket wasn't resonating with fans anymore?

The answer to that is the 50 overs World Cup. The tournament has basically kept 50 overs cricket alive even when bilateral ODI cricket has decisively run its course.

The thing is, it's not really the 50 overs format that drew large hordes of fans to India for the World Cup in 2023 or to England in 2019; it was how those World Cups panned out – 50 overs cricket as a format would not have survived if 2019 and 2023 had turned out like 2007 or 1999.

That's one reason; the other obvious one is that it comes once in four years, so it's like you miss this one and you have to wait another four years for the next. Now, by having another 50 overs tournament in between two eagerly awaited World Cups that come once in four years, the 50 overs World Cup won't lose its attraction; just that the Champions Trophy will be ignored like it was before, and why they put a stop to it.