The Champions Trophy, the 2nd biggest one-day tournament in World Cricket, starts in 6 days.

Yet we have England and New Zealand starting an ODI series against one another today. As a result, we have the odd situation of Pakistan and South Africa playing each other in a warmup match just a week before they play for real in their group match.

Is this some sort of joke? Why has more forward planning not gone into what should be a very prestigious tournament? One of the main attractions towards such tournaments is the sense of anticipation in the weeks leading up to the start. Yet there can be very little of that when teams are still focusing on other bi-lateral series just a few days before.

I realise there's a lot of cricket these days but ICC events don't come around that often and they need to be given more importance.

Discuss!