Vin­ode Mam­chan

The In­ter­na­tion­al Crick­et Coun­cil (ICC) has de­cid­ed that they would nar­row down the show­piece Crick­et World Cup event to just 10 na­tions for the next event in 2019 in Eng­land.

This de­ci­sion has been met with great re­sis­tance and there is a pe­ti­tion that has close to 20,000 sig­na­tures on it, which is call­ing on the ICC to re­think this move.

There are 14 na­tions at the cur­rent event and this means that six will be miss­ing out come next World Cup. The reg­u­lar ICC full mem­bers West In­dies, In­dia, Sri Lan­ka, Pak­istan, Aus­tralia, Eng­land, South Africa, New Zealand, Zim­bab­we and Bangladesh, will be the ones bat­tling for su­prema­cy.

At the cur­rent World Cup, the min­nows and this time Ire­land, Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates (UAE), Afghanistan and Scot­land all cre­at­ed great ex­cite­ment dur­ing their match­es. Ire­land took it fur­ther and de­feat­ed two Test play­ing full mem­ber na­tions in West In­dies and Zim­bab­we. They nar­row­ly missed out on qual­i­fy­ing for the quar­ter-fi­nals and this from a team that played just nine ODIs (One Day In­ter­na­tion­al) in be­tween the 2011 and cur­rent World Cup.

The ICC is say­ing that they want to make the event more com­pet­i­tive but what re­al­ly is there role? One would have thought that it a two-fold. While, they are there to pro­tect the in­tegri­ty of the game, they must al­so look to grow it as well.

I now un­der­stand why foot­ball is the most pop­u­lar sport in the world. It did not hap­pen by ac­ci­dent. FI­FA has made it spread­ing the game one of its core val­ues and this is why you have so many na­tions kick­ing ball.

Is the ICC try­ing to say that the 32 teams that com­pete at the FI­FA World Cup are all close in qual­i­ty? So FI­FA does not care about qual­i­ty foot­ball? Yet we have teams that are not as fan­cied mak­ing it to the FI­FA World Cup and ben­e­fit­ting not on­ly the sport in their coun­try but their hu­man de­vel­op­ment as well.

We all know what go­ing to the FI­FA World Cup in Ger­many in 2006 did for all of us in T&T. Ire­land cap­tain William Porter­field said the ICC should go to Ire­land dur­ing the six-week pe­ri­od of the World Cup and look at the im­pact the game has on the na­tion.

In an iron­ic twist, the ICC ac­tu­al­ly tweet­ed the fol­low­ing re­sponse to Ire­land at the end of their cam­paign ear­li­er this week "Ire­land cwc15 was a mem­o­rable and in­spir­ing one." Of course Porter­field crashed them for six with a re­sponse which stat­ed "ICC so mem­o­rable and in­spir­ing that you have de­cid­ed to cut the next WC to 10 teams. What is your vi­sion for the game of crick­et?"

The ICC's next an­nu­al meet­ing takes place in Bar­ba­dos from June 22 and there will be del­e­gates from the As­so­ciate na­tions among the 50 that will be at­tend­ing. This is sure to be at the top of the dis­cus­sion and don't be sur­prised if the ICC goes back on its word and in­clude the min­nows for the next World Cup.

If they need en­cour­age­ment they are get­ting that from the leg­ends of the game who are mak­ing a call for the game to spread around the world. For­mer In­di­an great Sachin Ten­dulkar is among the most no­ta­bles to have lent his sup­port to the As­so­ciate stand. He said that for the ma­jor na­tions to play against them every four years is not enough and the ICC should look to en­cour­age them more by mak­ing them play in­ter­na­tion­al games.

He said that when you want to glob­alise the game, you need to en­cour­age more and more teams to par­tic­i­pate, ob­vi­ous­ly not at the cost of drop­ping the stan­dard of play. He said the ICC needs to look at ways for the min­nows to im­prove their stan­dard and one of it is al­low­ing them more match­es against the top sides. By re­duc­ing the num­ber of teams at the World Cup will on­ly help to sti­fle the growth of the sport.

The ICC has giv­en Ire­land and Afghanistan ODI sta­tus but these teams hard­ly ever get any match­es against in­ter­na­tion­al sides. The rulers of the game have to help in this process and en­cour­age full mem­bers to adopt an ap­proach where they are on board in as­sist­ing with the de­vel­op­ment of the game in these coun­tries.

I must ap­plaud the West In­dies Crick­et Board (WICB), who has been try­ing their ut­most best to get the Unit­ed States and Cana­da play­ing crick­et against the ter­ri­to­ries in the Caribbean. The USA and Cana­da don't have ODI sta­tus, the lat­ter lost its a cou­ple years ago but the WICB who has been giv­en the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of de­vel­op­ing crick­et in the Amer­i­c­as, has de­cid­ed that at the re­gion­al lev­el, these teams can play and they have been com­ing to the Caribbean to as­sist with their de­vel­op­ment.