Should Ireland be in The Next World Cup?

The decision made by the ICC to limit the Cricket World Cup in 2015 to the 10 Test playing nations has caused a lot of controversy amongst the cricketing world especially amongst the Associate nations themselves, no where else has this decision been challenged more than by Cricket Ireland who argue that with their performances in the last two world cups they should be able to compete at the next world cup in 2015 or at least be able to have the chance of qualifying for the opportunity of taking part. This has not been granted by the ICC who have decided to go back to the format seen at the World Cup in 1992 where the 10 full nations will play in a round robin competition with the top 4 teams taking part in the semi finals.

The subject of Associate Nations at the World Cup is one that is often debated and everyone has different opinions. One of the opinions on the side of Associate Nations being able to take part in the World Cup is that how are these nations supposed to improve and aid their future development other than playing more competitive games against the best teams in the World. The main view in argument to this and one that is taken by former Australian captain Ricky Ponting is that regularly taking beatings by the big nations will not help these players develop as players and will ultimately make them lose confidence and belief and to aid their development it will be much more beneficial for them to play in more games against the other Associate Nations.

The argument by Ireland is that they are far more competitive than most of the Associate Nations, this can be seen by the fact that they have recorded victories against 3 full test nations in the last two World Cups. Even the games they lost were not embarrassing defeats like countries such as Kenya and Canada were receiving on a regular basis during this World Cup. The fact is in the ICC Official one day rankings Ireland are currently in 10^th positions meaning they are ahead of Zimbabwe who are 11^th, even with this statistic Zimbabwe are guaranteed a spot in 4 years time and Ireland are not.

The prevention of Ireland competing does seem to be very unfair, I agree that the format of the next world cup did need to be changed and the number of meaningless games was at an alarming level this world cup but to eliminate the 14 team format to 10 without what appears to be any warning does seem to be very harsh and unfair. The ICC are the governing body and if they believe that to limit the next tournament to 10 teams is the best way forward then that is fair enough but surely there should be some sort of qualifying system in place. No teams who play in the football World Cup except the host nation play without going through a qualifying stage. Obviously there are not as many cricket playing nations as there are football but one way to counter this is why don’t the top 8 ranked one day sides 2 years prior to the tournament in 2015 get guaranteed a place at the World Cup then the last 2 places available goes to the winners and runners up of a qualifying tournament. The other option would be to decrease the World Cup from 14 teams to 12, this would mean that there would be two less associate nations playing but ultimately still gives the nations a possibility to qualify to take part if they are good enough. This option would also give one of the quickest and promising associate nation Afghanistan the opportunity to qualify for the next World Cup, they have some very promising players with two of them playing for the MCC against Nottinghamshire in the English season opening fixture this year. The format for the next World Cup prevents these players from the opportunity of playing in a World Cup for at least another 8 years until 2019.

The ICC have in response to the format changes to the World Cup have changed the format in the Twenty20 World Cup increasing the number of countries taking part to allow Associate Nations the opportunity still to play international cricket against the elite nations. This is all very well but ultimately this will mean that the Associate Nations in the meantime may well develop in the shorter format of the game but preventing them from taking part in the longer forms of one day cricket will ultimately stop the development of the players and will also mean that it will be far less likely for these country’s to strive towards gaining full international approval and able to play in Test Matches.

The World Cup showed that even though both Kenya and Holland lost all their matches and Canada only won 1 match all these nations especially Kenya and Canada performances vastly improved as the tournament went on. In particular Canada performed very admirably against Pakistan and had the Pakistanis very concerned for a time before the Canadians middle order collapsed. Kenya also after a couple of humiliating defeats against Pakistan and Sri Lanka early in the tournament performed very admirably against the Australians where they scored 264-6 in response to Australia’s 324-6. The point here is that both nations seemed to improve vastly as the tournament went on which shows the more they were playing against the superior nations the more competitive they became which surely shows that for these country’s to develop further they need to play more games against the full test playing country’s and not less which is more than likely to take place now that they have been prevented from competing in the next World Cup.

Cricket Ireland has not taken the news well and have stated that they are more than likely going to challenge the ICC decision, they are not going to do this alone and there have been talks with the other 94 non test playing nations to form a 95 country strong challenge to challenge this decision as it isn’t only Ireland who have been prevented from the opportunity to play in the World Cup, all non test playing countries have and surely if we are to believe what the ICC say that that they want to develop the game of cricket World wide this decision is wrong and unfair.

Overall it is hoped that the ICC will re-think their decision and look at alternatives but this appears to be very unlikely which looks like that Ireland, Afghanistan and the rest will have to do with playing just Twenty20 World Cups for the time being. The big question is that will this affect the development of the Associate Nations, the answer must surely be yes, everyone’s dream is to play in a World Cup, if you have a chance to qualify and you are not good enough then a player will except that but to not even have the chance to qualify and earn the right to participate is surely wrong and not the kind of system the ICC wants to implement. Let’s hope they see sense, I won’t hold my breath.