Hello reader! Just think of that country which, according to you, will win the ongoing Cricket World Cup. You possibly thought of New Zealand or India or Australia or South Africa. Whatever be it, but no one is really certain of the new winner of the cricketing world. But in my view, Ireland is poised to become the winner. What? Shocked? Oh no! I don’t mean the World Cup, I mean Hearts, Hearts of hundreds of thousands of avid cricket viewers. Few could have envisaged such a promising performance from a so-called ‘minnow’ before the World Cup.
Apart from Ireland’s triumphs, who can forget the expressions of sheer delight and elation on the faces of Afghani players after snatching their first ever World Cup victory? Such victories, even if only one, prove to be a silver lining in the otherwise gray situation of their tormented country. All in all, World Cup offers an array of happy and proud moments to the people of these non-Test playing nations in every 4 years.
Apparently, the International Cricket Council (ICC) organizes the World Cup in every four years with a view to publicize the mega event across all the five continents as much as possible. But in the process, ICC has become a self-contradictory organization, something which we generally attribute to some irresponsible governments across the world. Self-contradictory in the way that on one hand, ICC says that it wants to expand Cricket globally, take it to many new nations and on the other hand, it takes retrospective decisions like reducing the no. of playing nations from 14 to just 10 in the next World Cup!
The new mandate has closed 99 out of 100 doors for all the non-Test playing nations. According to the new concept, only those teams which will be in the Top 10 in the rankings of September, 2017 will be eligible to lock horns in the World Cup, 2019. This is a lose-lose situation for the minnows because to accomplish the stiff task of being placed in the Top 10 list by 2017 and that too without playing any matches with the mainstream nations is implausible. Only the contests within the minnows can’t help with their cause of qualifying for the next World Cup.
Soon after the announcement made by the ICC, Sachin Tendulkar condemned the mandate by saying that leave alone 10, a total of 25 teams must be allowed to participate in the mega competition. Although the suggestion of 25 nations by SRT is quite frivolous but the vision behind it is succinct i.e. to make cricket an international sport in a true sense rather than centering it to only the colonies of the British empire.
One sport from which cricket can take cues to become a global sensation is the game of Football. In other words, ICC should follow the FIFA model without any apprehensions. Today, FIFA has a whopping 209 associate nations, all of the 209 are given international rankings at fixed intervals. Also, the FIFA World Cup comprises of not 10 or 14 but of 32 competing nations. On the contrary ICC has just a meagre 47 associate nations and the ranking is given to only the traditional 10 members. Apart from many other subjective reasons, the above mentioned numbers are good enough to conclude why cricket is still a far cry from becoming a sport as global as football.
Hence, for the ICC, the need of the hour is repealing its decision to curtail the no. of countries from 14 to 10 to support its own cause of proliferating cricket in as many countries as possible. The opportunity to play among the bests on a frontline platform like the World Cup encourages the new members in the best way. Also, the participation of non-Test playing countries enhances the viewership of cricket and the revenues generated by the World Cup.
As a matter of fact, Ireland has defeated goliaths like Pakistan, England and West Indies in the World Cup. Now, that, for me, is a matter of capability and not just chance. What say?
