That plan would do wonders for one-day cricket and cricket as a whole.

Compared to the 50 over world cup anything would look ruthless. To be fair you could give the ODI tournament the same treatment as T20 – limit the games that are allowed to be scheduled each year and trim the tournament. Oh and only let the top 6 ranked nations qualify automatically to give the associates a shot.
Just thinking about it within the same sort of window you could have a test knockout tournament with the top 8 ranked nations. Prepare ‘result wickets’ and schedule 2 rest days between each game.
Rotate between each format a year at a time with the champions trophy (in the old knockout format) rounding out the four. Stack the champions trophy with 6 affiliates to make it interesting.
Probably all been said before…
Anyway, is it time to watch Zimbabwe lose yet?

For example, it took 42 matches before anyone had to head home from the 50-over World Cup.

The teams who then left were Zimbabwe, Canada, Kenya, Bangladesh, Ireland and the Netherlands.

42 matches…

We take your point, but it is actually possible to win two out of three Super 8 games and not go through, so there is at least an incentive to try and win all three matches. This isn’t always the case in cricket tournaments.

It’s not perfect, but we will slowly shed teams as we go along. Some other tournaments have seen the same eight teams play each other interminably with seemingly little at stake.

What? Eh? Was it not before?

OK I’ll play.
If you win 1 game out of 2 in the group stage, you will probably go through to the super 8’s. If you win 2 of your 3 super 8 games you will go through to the semi finals.
On aggregate that’s a win ratio of 60%. That is ample opportunity for teams to recover from a bad game.
From the semis onwards it has to be a knockout format so the Saffers can choke and someone else has a chance of winning.
Given the IPL vs the world handicap tournament follows on straight after in South Africa I thought they could have shaved another couple of days off the tournament (well both tournaments actually) to allow a few days between the two.

I want a chaos shirt!
Anyone doing the cricinfo fantasy game for this? Is it ok to link a league now that you work for them?

This has already been covered in full.

Let’s move on.

Seconded.

England Stumblers v Pakistan Chaos.