Ire­land de­serve to par­tic­i­pate in the 2015 World Cup. That the ICC ex­ec­u­tive board wish­es to freeze them out re­flects a new phase in the game's glob­al evo­lu­tion. Some­thing sim­i­lar ap­plies to crick­et's Irish ques­tion, which could be about any num­ber of things. Is it about the size of the Cup? Is it about the length of the Cup? Is it about the venue of Cup? Af­ter all, In­dia and Sri Lan­ka had no prob­lem with a 14-team tour­na­ment. Why are Aus­tralia and New Zealand so keen to win­now the par­tic­i­pants away to 10?

Per­haps there's an ar­gu­ment for World Cups on­ly be­ing held on the sub­con­ti­nent: it is, af­ter all, where the crowds and the tele­vi­sion au­di­ences are. Is it, on the oth­er hand, about Zim­bab­we, that ghost in flesh at the ICC ex­ec­u­tive board which some­how re­tains full vot­ing rights and fi­nan­cial en­ti­tle­ments de­spite not play­ing Test crick­et, and de­spite be­ing con­sid­er­ably the in­fe­ri­or of Ire­land at one-day crick­et, and prob­a­bly the Nether­lands too. At the mo­ment, the pres­i­dent of Zim­bab­we Crick­et can­not even vis­it Aus­tralia, such is his glob­al rep­u­ta­tion.

The Twen­ty20 op­tion

Or is it about Twen­ty20 (T20), giv­en that the ICC is of­fer­ing as­so­ciate mem­bers par­tic­i­pa­tion in a big­ger World Twen­ty20 as a sop for their ex­clu­sion from the World Cup? A pos­i­tive of the dis­pute is that the as­so­ciates have proven smarter than the full mem­bers gave them cred­it for: un­der­stand­ing that Twen­ty20 is most con­ge­nial to the mediocre, have re­fused to be in­fan­tilised. The irony is that part of Twen­ty20's ap­peal is its ca­pac­i­ty for cre­at­ing up­sets, which might be felt to have of­fered as­so­ciates a short­er cut to suc­cess. Ku­dos to the Irish and the Dutch for see­ing past that, and in­sist­ing on the right to mas­ter a form of crick­et that isn't just about keep­ing ad­ver­tise­ments apart. You might by now have worked out that my sym­pa­thies lie with the as­so­ciates; ac­tu­al­ly, I find it dif­fi­cult to be­lieve that a crick­et lover could feel any oth­er way, giv­en that it is oth­er crick­et lovers who sus­tain the game in its out­sta­tions, and that they de­serve as much nur­tur­ing and en­cour­age­ment as it is in the ICC's gift to give.

As­so­ciate mem­ber­ship

All pow­er to the pop­u­lar out­cry against Ire­land's treat­ment. Cred­it even to ICC pres­i­dent Sharad Pawar for putting the mat­ter back on the agen­da - tem­po­rary cred­it any­way. I fan­cy, too, that the World Cup needs as­so­ciate mem­bers rather more than the ICC ex­ec­u­tive board has hith­er­to been pre­pared to ac­knowl­edge.

Sri Lan­ka de­feat­ing In­dia in 1979; Zim­bab­we over­com­ing Aus­tralia in 1983, then Eng­land in 1992; Bangladesh rout­ing Pak­istan in 1999; Kenya rolling West In­dies in 1996 and squeez­ing in­to the fi­nal four in 2003; Ire­land stitch­ing up Pak­istan in 2007 and Eng­land in 2011: you will for­get many World Cup deeds be­fore you for­get these.

To be fair, there is mer­it in the con­tention that a ten-team round-robin is the most ef­fi­cient and fair pre­lim­i­nary stage for the World Cup. The man­age­ment of the ICC orig­i­nal­ly brought forth a plan for 2015 un­der which the top eight coun­tries would qual­i­fy au­to­mat­i­cal­ly, and the next six (two full mem­bers and two as­so­ciates) would play off for the last two places: it was the ex­ec­u­tive board, look­ing af­ter its own, that in­sist­ed on au­to­mat­ic qual­i­fi­ca­tion of full mem­bers. Four years out from the tour­na­ment, it does re­quire some pre­cog­ni­tion to eval­u­ate the fu­ture strength of the as­so­ciate mem­bers: their tal­ent pools are small, and sus­cep­ti­ble to one-off set­backs and key re­tire­ments.

Ire­land and the Nether­lands have handy teams now; by 2015 they might have gone the way of Kenya. They are, how­ev­er, sure­ly like­li­er to de­vel­op more com­pet­i­tive na­tion­al XIs if they have World Cup par­tic­i­pa­tion to aim for.And as an in­cen­tive for as­so­ciate mem­bers of the ICC, whether in the mat­ter of play­ers, me­dia or spon­sors, noth­ing trumps a shot, how­ev­er op­ti­mistic, at the in­ter­na­tion­al one-day crown. The Cup struc­ture sure­ly ex­ists to serve crick­et, rather than the oth­er way round. When all is said and done, the most eq­ui­table so­lu­tion still ap­pears a 12-team cup. Per­haps 14 com­peti­tors was too many; 10, how­ev­er, feels like too few.

It re­mains true that while no for­mer British colony has won foot­ball's World Cup, on­ly for­mer British colonies have won crick­et's.

Dif­fu­sion of crick­et

The Irish ques­tion is an in­ter­est­ing one to have to con­sid­er at all, be­cause it seems to im­ply a new stage in the dif­fu­sion of crick­et round the world. Con­sid­er how crick­et in­ter­na­tion­alised in the first, sec­ond and third places. The idea of a ju­nior tier of in­volve­ment then dates from Ju­ly 1965, when the Im­pe­r­i­al Crick­et Con­fer­ence changed its name to the In­ter­na­tion­al Crick­et Con­fer­ence, and its rules so as to ac­com­mo­date mem­bers from out­side the Com­mon­wealth. Cey­lon, Fi­ji and the Unit­ed States be­came the first "as­so­ciate mem­bers", their ranks swelled fur­ther the fol­low­ing year by Bermu­da, Den­mark, East Africa and the Nether­lands.

In 1971, aug­ment­ed by Ar­genti­na, Bermu­da, Cana­da, Gibral­tar, Hong Kong, Is­rael, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea and Sin­ga­pore, as­so­ciate mem­bers re­ceived vot­ing rights. Four years lat­er, for no scream­ing­ly ob­vi­ous rea­son, Sri Lan­ka (for­mer­ly Cey­lon) and East Africa were in­vit­ed to put the "world" in World Cup when the first event was staged in Eng­land; on­ly the 1992 World Cup, al­so an AN­ZAC en­ter­prise, has gone with­out as­so­ciate mem­ber in­volve­ment since. The third phase of glob­al­i­sa­tion com­menced as an In­di­an ini­tia­tive, with the pres­i­den­cy of Jag­mo­han Dalmiya at the ICC. Cast­ing en­vi­ous eyes on the "world game" that soc­cer had be­come, he ex­hib­it­ed a mis­sion­ary zeal for ex­pand­ing crick­et's hori­zons.

If his modus operan­di some­times looked he was throw­ing darts at a map of the world, he pro­vid­ed crick­et with its first spe­cif­ic de­vel­op­ment bankroll: the in­au­gur­al ICC Knock­out in 1998 was staged ex­press­ly to en­dow the coun­cil's de­vel­op­ment pro­gramme. And with the rev­o­lu­tion in crick­et's fi­nances over which Dalmiya presided, the ICC could fi­nal­ly af­ford to make as­so­ciate mem­ber­ship mean some­thing fi­nan­cial­ly, and af­fil­i­ate mem­ber­ship too. Num­bers of af­fil­i­ate mem­bers grew from six then to 60 to­day.

Elite crick­et

On elite crick­et, how­ev­er, this process left neg­li­gi­ble trace. It re­mains true that while no for­mer British colony has won soc­cer's World Cup, on­ly for­mer British colonies have won crick­et's. Boards of con­trol con­sent­ed to de­vel­op­ment not be­cause they saw it is a pri­or­i­ty but be­cause it seemed like A Good Idea, and per­haps al­so be­cause they sound­ed so weighty when they said things like: "Of course, we're look­ing at Chi­na." In par­tic­u­lar, they ex­hib­it­ed neg­li­gi­ble in­ter­est in sched­ul­ing fix­tures with as­so­ciates, their at­ti­tude be­ing that by sign­ing off on ICC de­vel­op­ment bud­gets they had, as it were, "giv­en at the of­fice".

The ICC's de­vel­op­ment strat­e­gy has changed in the last few years, from a hor­i­zon­tal mod­el, spread­ing crick­et to as many coun­tries as it could con­ve­nient­ly colour in on the glove, to a ver­ti­cal one, in­vest­ing most heav­i­ly where re­sults are most promis­ing. Fear­less, feisty Ire­land is a suc­cess sto­ry - or at least it was. What's al­so changed in the last five years, iron­i­cal­ly, is In­dia it­self. A decade ago, glob­al­i­sa­tion was ex­plained as a long-term strat­e­gy to en­hance crick­et's cul­tur­al and even­tu­al­ly its com­mer­cial po­ten­tial. To­day, long-term think­ing is so 20th cen­tu­ry: it's far more sat­is­fy­ing and fill­ing to gorge on the low-hang­ing fruit in the In­di­an or­chard.

This has, one sus­pects, had a sub­tly neg­a­tive im­pact on crick­et's in­ter­est in new fron­tiers. It's a cor­po­rate log­ic: the core prod­uct is tick­ing over nice­ly; why both­er with re­search and de­vel­op­ment? It's al­so an or­gan­i­sa­tion­al out­come: each mem­ber of the ICC ex­ec­u­tive board rep­re­sents a na­tion­al board of con­trol; what do any of them gain from spread­ing crick­et's reach as op­posed to in­creas­ing their own share of the grow­ing spoils? Es­pe­cial­ly when, In­dia's aside, boards world­wide are strapped for cash right now. Crick­et's Irish ques­tion, then, is in­sep­a­ra­ble from this hinge point in the game's de­vel­op­ment, and is a test of its ad­min­is­tra­tion's good faith. That be­ing so, it is hard to feel con­fi­dent. A shrewd Aus­tralian prime min­is­ter - not that one, but the one be­fore him - once said: "Al­ways back self-in­ter­est. At least you know it's try­ing." Here, how­ev­er, that will turn this Irish Ques­tion in­to an Irish Joke.