World Cup 2015 Warning: Rewarded with the Axe

Now that a most successful World Cup is behind us, the focus shifts on to an all-important decision which was taken by the International Cricket Council (ICC) on Monday for the next one down under. As the cricketing world – and more importantly the Associates – waited, with bated breath, to be told of their future, disbelief and disappointment gave way to a sense of betrayal and an outpour of expletives on the twitter accounts of Irish players after the ICC reduced the number of teams that would be allowed to participate in the 2015 World Cup to 10, thus effectively shutting out the emerging Associate Nations.

 

The decision is all the more surprising given that the Associate teams, represented by heady teams such as Ireland and Netherlands, had reason to believe that their fighting spirit, despite some dingy performances from Kenya and Canada, would serve to elevate their case for inclusion. Not only did a prolific Ireland thwart England, but they also stretched World Champion India and gave the West Indies a scare in Mohali.

Contrast this with Bangladesh, who has been a Test nation now for over a decade but has paid meagre dividends against the investment of ICC. Zimbabwe, ostracized from the cricketing community, is now being given the ticket to return as a Test nation. Ireland had almost as good World Cup as Bangladesh and Zimbabwe, and hence, should ideally have been given a chance in the next edition. While Bangladesh bombed to scores of 58 and 78 against West Indies and South Africa respectively, Netherlands scored 115 and 120 against the same teams. While it was proper that Bangladesh was embraced as part of the special clique of Test nations, now a billion-dollar enterprise, surely some of the benefit must now trickle down to the deserving Associates.

This decision of the ICC poses the danger of robbing the big event of its romanticism. The average fan of the game would not care much about what happens in a Canada v. Kenya tie, but it would mean a lot to the two participants and surely a little compassion for the hard-working minnows could produce the next Sri Lanka, who in the 70s, were a minnow in its own right. There would, of course, be one-sided affairs. Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer do demolish their couple of preliminary round opponents. But, what this decision has done is to ensure that Kenya’s defeating West Indies in ‘96 or Ireland getting past England a month back would be the final pieces in the history of dark-horses; no more pages would be added to the David v. Goliath chronicle.

If the ICC is intent on trimming the mismatch and wants the sporting spectacle to be a powerful advertisement for the ODI format, it could do a lot worse than including promising contenders such as Ireland and Netherlands in the itinerary of the Future Tours Programme (FTP). Kenya rose and surprised the world in the ‘96 World Cup, much before Bangladesh did it in ‘99, but fell away due to a variety of reasons, only some of which are cricketing.

Various methods and formats have been floated in the past month with a view to streamlining the World Cup and maintaining a sense of sanity amid a chaotic set of encounters. A 12-team tournament with qualifier bouts for the final two spots would be one based on sound rationale and the principle of inclusiveness.

It’s still four years till the next World Cup comes along. It is conceivable that, given four years, the likes of Ireland and Netherlands will raise their graphs, boasting more spikes than those of Bangladesh and Zimbabwe.

If it indeed is the vision of ICC to expand cricket on the world arena, surely the abandonment of these purveyors of sheer entertainment is counter-productive. Throwing a baby in the ring full of seasoned fighters would indeed create a sense of ridicule, but the ICC’s decision to throw the baby out with the bath water, especially after such performances as to merit accolades and rewards, is inexplicable.