Associate and Affiliate Cricket Under Threat

[Sir john]

ICC poll reveals overwhelming support for a 16-nation World Cup in 2015 Cricket’s full members may want a ten-team World Cup from 2015 but this proposal is not supported by the fans, according to a poll conducted by the ICC on its own official website. The poll was open to all and featured prominently on the front page of the website of the governing body for about 24 hours starting on Thursday September 16. The polling question was clear: ‘How many teams do you think should be in the ICC Cricket World Cup 2015?’ Four options were given: * 16 teams * 12 teams * 10 teams * Other By 3.00pm GMT 60% of voters were in favour of a 16-team World Cup in 2015. Only 15% wanted the number of countries cut back to ten and 14% were happy with a twelve-team competition. At 11.00pm GMT the support for a 16-team World Cup in 2015 had risen to 73%. A mere 9% called for a ten-nation event. With the vote for 16 teams still running at well over 65%, the poll was pulled from the site on Friday morning. Of course, polls don’t mean everything, as any politician will tell you. Nevertheless, one that is conducted by the ICC on its own official website needs to be taken very seriously. Most certainly it has become quite clear that a large number of cricket followers want to see the top six emerging nations compete at the 2015 World Cup. Fans can rest assured that those top six will have earned their place on the big stage. The qualifying process has until now involved nearly all 95 Associate and Affiliate members and has been rigorous and highly competitive. When the ICC development program really swung into action at around the time of the 2001 ICC Trophy there were fewer than 100,000 players in the non-full member nations. Now there are around 500,000. The growth of the sport has been phenomenal. The rise of the emerging nations has been particularly noticeable since 2007. Since that time Ireland have reached the super eight stage of a World Cup. The Netherlands defeated Bangladesh and a Zimbabwe XI and has burst into the main ODI table alongside the Irish, Kenya and the ten Full members. Scotland produced a stunning come-from-behind victory against a very strong India A combination. Afghanistan’s amazing climb up the ladder has been an inspiration. Papua New Guinea’s Raymond Haoda was the leading wicket taker at the 2010 Under-19 World Cup beating off a field that included Australia’s rising stars Alister McDermott and Josh Hazlewood. It should be noted that these feats were achieved in the 50-over format, not in Twenty20. The Associates and Affiliates don’t want to be restricted to the T20 version of the sport. It’s important that players are exposed to different formats as they strive to excel. It is impossible to imagine a wonderful all-format batsman like Sachin Tendulkar being produced in a T20-only environment. Clearly this is not the time to be discouraging new countries from playing the sport. Consider what New Zealand skipper Daniel Vettori had to say about the World Cup in an interview on the ICC’s official website: ‘I think it's most cricketers’ dream to play in the World Cup … For the New Zealand team to win the World Cup would be the ultimate achievement.’ Surely all players, no matter where they happen to be born, deserve a fair and achievable pathway to the ICC’s ultimate ‘global’ event? Players, volunteers, coaches, fans and sponsors in the new markets need incentives. Seeing their country play at a World Cup is a great incentive to keep working hard, to keep coaching and or to umpire, play or score. Cricket can ill afford to lose such valuable contributors to other sports such as baseball, rugby and basketball, but this is likely to happen in the Associate and Affiliate countries if the World Cup dream is taken away. Moreover, cricket is fast gaining a reputation for being the greedy game. Too often now the full members seem solely intent on counting the cash instead of providing a stable base for the sport to prosper. A 16-team World Cup is the perfect balance between incentive, quality, growth and stability. Four groups of four. Quarter-finals, semi-finals and final. It’s simple, short and every game counts, and it would seem to be what the ICC's loyal fans really want.

[Sir john]

Ireland and Scotland condemn ICC recommendations The chief executives of Scotland and Ireland’s cricket governing bodies have condemned plans by the ICC to reduce the number of participants in the World Cup. The CEOs of the major Test-playing nations met in Cape Town earlier this week and included among their recommendations the proposal that only 10 nations should take part in the sport’s premier tournament from 2015 onwards. This scheme makes a mockery of the ICC’s claims that it is committed to establishing a structure to help the emerging Associate sides. “Can the world’s "second biggest" sport really only have 10 teams in its World Cup, when football has 32 and rugby has 20,” said Roddy Smith, the chief executive of Cricket Scotland. “The cricket development reasons are very strong against it and all other major sports are expanding, not contracting, their World Cups. “[if it happens] A 10-team World Cup must have a qualification element. I would suggest that the bottom two Full Members [currently Bangladesh and Zimbabwe] join the top six or eight Associates in an eight or 10-team event for the final two places for the 2015 event. You cannot have a true World Cup if only 10 teams out of 105 countries are eligible to compete in it.” His words were echoed by Warren Deutrom, his counterpart in Ireland, who argued forcibly that the ICC is making a serious error of judgment, not least because there is growing evidence that Associate countries such as Scotland, Ireland and the Netherlands, are perfectly capable of beating the likes of Bangladesh and Zimbabwe on the ODI stage. “To say that, effectively, there are just 10 countries who can compete successfully in the ODI format flies in the face of all recent indicators –most obviously illustrated by the presence of Associates [Kenya and Ireland] in the last eight of the 2003 and 2007 World Cups, by Ireland’s current position of 10th in the ODI rankings and the fact that Bangladesh lost to the Netherlands and Ireland as recently as July,” said Deutrom. “These results have occurred because of the ICC’s own investment in a High Performance Programme, which was designed to facilitate the visible emergence of a second tier of nations. It is surely illogical to improve the quality of these countries and then deny them access to the most obvious vehicle to showcase that success. “I would urge the ICC Board – indeed I hope they regard it as their duty – to focus on a broader discussion about the World Cup’s philosophy, rather than see it strictly as a discussion about commercial appeal to sponsors and broadcasters. We would urge the Board to at least defer a decision until after the 2011 event [which features 14 countries], to see whether such a drastic move is justified on cricketing grounds, let alone the broader principles of what a true, credible World Cup should be about.” The ICC plans to increase the number of participants in future World Twenty20 tournaments from 12 to 16, but that is merely a sop, designed to placate the Associates, without any consideration for the bigger picture. By any other criteria, this is an addle-headed volte-face of all the missionary work done by the ICC in the last decade.

[Sir john]

ICC kicks the Associates and Affiliates in the teeth What many in Associates cricket have feared for some time was confirmed on Tuesday, with the recommendation of the ICC Chief Executives’ Committee ‘that the ICC Board should consider a 10-team format for the ICC’s flagship event, the ICC Cricket World Cup, from 2015’. So will there be a global qualifying system for those ten places, with thrilling home-and-away encounters between Full members and their Associate or Affiliate rivals? It hardly seems likely that that’s the way the Chief Executives’ minds are working. It would be hard to imagine a greater slap in the face from the Full members for their Associate (and Affiliate) colleagues, or a more calculated dismissal of the work which has been done over the past five years by those involved in the High Performance Program. I have to admit that I did not believe that even the ICC, with its headlong Gadarene pursuit of the fast buck, would be prepared to act so brutally in the interest of the favoured few. It seems that Ireland’s heroics in the Caribbean in 2007 and performances like the Netherlands’ in beating Bangladesh in an ODI a few weeks ago really do count for nothing with the nabobs of the ICC. Or, perhaps, they actually count for too much – not content with cutting the number of Associate qualifiers to four for the 2011 event in an attempt to prevent a repetition of the embarrassing early elimination of Pakistan last time, the Full members are too frightened of future upsets to allow the piranhas (minnows with teeth) into the World Cup at all. Instead, the Associates and Affiliates are to be offered the sop of a 16-team World Twenty20 competition. The World Cup, it seems, is too good for the likes of Ireland, the Netherlands, Kenya and Afghanistan, but some of them will be kindly permitted to play three hit-and-giggle games every two years. It is, quite simply, an utter scandal, at variance with all the high-sounding words on glossy paper which have spurted out of Dubai in recent years. Should the recommendation be accepted by the ICC Board, as it almost certainly will it will, I believe be the most disgraceful decision in international cricket since England, Australia and New Zealand resolved to go on playing Test cricket against Apartheid South Africa in blatant contravention of the ICC’s constitution. No amount of flannel from Chief Executive Haroon Lorgat can disguise the truly appalling nature of the money-grubbing exclusiveness which now rules in the ICC. No other international sporting body has such a regressive policy, and none of them would define their ‘flagship event’ as a narrow, self-interested closed shop. Indeed, the world bodies for sports like rugby league and baseball are moving to expand the number of participants in their major international events, not to reduce them. The ICC Board must be left in no doubt that they can only achieve this outrageous goal at the cost of souring in perpetuity their relationship with 95 of their 105 members. We must do everything in our power to bring them to whatever passes for their senses.

[Sir john]

Afghanistan unhappy with smaller World Cup The Afghanistan Cricket Board has expressed its concerns on the ICC's plan to restrict the 50 overs World Cup to only 10 countries, with ambiguity about the chance of associates and affiliates participating in such future events. The CEO of the ACB, Hamid Shinwari, told the Cricket Post in a phone interview from Kabul that cricket fans and players in Afghanistan are unhappy with the recommendation as it will not help develop cricket in the country and will be a major setback in our efforts to motivate the Afghan players to play hard for a goal that we set for them, but now may no longer exist. Hamid said, “this will discourage Afghan players to play hard for reaching the World Cup”. Hamid welcomed the ICC plan to increase the World Twenty20 to a 16 team event and said, “but we were trying hard to make our way to the 50 overs World Cup. Now we do not know what it will be like”. Hamid said that the ICC did not consult or inform the ACB about the latest development and added, “it is certainly not encouraging news for Afghan cricket.” The ACB had said earlier that the World Cricket League Division One games in the Netherlands earlier this year was its launching pad for the T20 World Cup in 2012 and the 50 overs World Cup in 2015. Hamid says, the ACB will ask to know the background to this decision and how it will help develop cricket in his country. “We all were trying hard to reach the 2015 World Cup and this has motivated our players and administration to try its best and plan the proper infrastructure to prepare for the challanges associated with reaching the World Cup", he said. The ICC has recently told the media that restricting the big event to 10 participants does not exclude associates, but has not explained the mechanism through which associates or affiliates (such as Afghanistan) can climb the ladder to the 50 overs World Cup. Although the ICC insists its new decision does not exclude associates, it at least makes it a much harder dream for them and affiliates to play in the 50 overs World Cup. Despite Afghanistan having ODI status since 2009, it has had no chance to play an ODI with a full member. Afghanistan was hoping that by reaching the World Cup in 2015, it would get exposure to the full member countries and the next level of cricket. Associates and affiliates are represented by three members in the ICC meetings, but it is unclear at the moment what role these three members played in the latest recommendation of the ICC. The ACB says they were not consulted or even made aware of the ICC agenda by these three members that represent the associates and affiliates. If the ICC does not exclude the Associates and Affiliates from the future 50 overs World Cup, it is then unclear how the qualification to this event will be structured. Ibrahim Momand, a cricket analyst and commentator who covered the World Twenty20 in the West Indies for the Afghan audience, says the ICC’s decision to restrict the tournament to 10 countries “will kill cricket in Afghanistan”. He argues that cricket fans in Afghanistan found a lost hope in cricket to play with the likes of Pakistan, India, and England and prove their right to live as an independent nation in the world. “They could not do it in politics, so sport is an avenue they wanted to use to face the world and play with big nations and show their national pride. The World Cup was an option for them to face full members”, Momand says. Momand is of the view that if Afghanistan loses the chance of reaching the 50 overs World Cup it will be the end of crickets popularity in Afghanistan. Afghans have dreamed of seeing their team on TV, playing strong cricketing nations and showing their country's flag in major cricket events, he says. Ibrahim Momand sees Afghanistan as different cricketing nation than some associates and affiliates. He believes Afghanistan is set to become a major cricketing country and the ICC should consider this. Only considering the interest of full members is not fair, he says. Momand says Afghans followed the recent Ramadan Trophy that the Afghanistan Youth club won in Pakistan and were ashappy as if they have won a World Cup because for Afghans this is an extraordinary thing happening to them. Momand covered the Karachi event live for a radio network in Afghanistan that runs over 40 radio FM channels across Afghanistan and millions of Afghans followed the tournament live through Shamshad TV inside and outside Afghanistan through normal land antennas and satellite. Momand says that if ICC structures the qualifying round for the World Cup in a way that associates and affiliates will have to play the likes of South Africa and Pakistan, then none of them will find its way to the world cup as the full members will not allow themselves to lose in the qualifying rounds, or “the associate and affiliate world now has to play Bangladesh and Zimbabwe for their spots in the World Cup.”