Cricket Ireland are considering a legal challenge to the ICC decision to drop the non-Test playing nations from the next instalment of the World Cup, to be played in Australia and New Zealand in 2015. While it would appear beyond doubt that the tournament needs to be restructured, and shortened, omitting the up-and-comers would appear to be both unromantic and short-sighted at the same time. Imagine if FIFA decided to do away with its World Cup qualifying and decided just to award places to the the top 16 ranked nations? Or if the Football Association in England decided to limit the FA Cup to the four League divisions.
Rather than excluding teams whose upsets contribute the early interest to the tournament (eg O'Brien's stunning innings to lead Ireland to victory over England) as well as removing the major ambition for the non-test playing nations, the ICC should be going the other way and attempting to make the World Cup appealing to a larger percentage of the globe.
The 2011 tournament featured 14 teams playing 49 matches over 43 days. By contrast, last year's football World Cup in South Africa featured 32 teams playing 64 games over 31 days. What's the big difference? Cricket featured two groups of seven, while football had eight groups of four. Cricket could easily move to four seeded groups of four - football seeds and sorts its groups for diversity - allowing two teams from each through to the quarter finals. That would shrink the group games from 42 in 2011 to 24 in 2015 while allowing in two extra teams. It is easy to argue that those extra teams wouldn't be up to scratch, but Sri Lanka progressed quickly from that status in 1975 to winning the tournament 21 years later. Incidentally, the first tournament in 1975 was played in two weeks.
Talk of one-day cricket's demise in the face of Twenty20 is clearly premature. The tournament was undoubtedly too slow to get going, but was ultimately gripping, and a better showcase of talents like Steyn and Tendulkar than the lottery of the game's shortest form. The ICC may be left with a tough choice. Twenty20 cricket may be best suited to a global franchise system, leaving the nations to concentrate on Test and one-day cricket. However, it will be hard for the ICC (and the national bodies) to turn their back on the riches Twenty20 is delivering.
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