The associate's thread

[from_the_stands]

Rankings for associates/affiliates;

http://static.icc-cricket.yahoo.net/ugc/documents/DOC_2F720C5CFBDA32A9CDD7799A750491CF_1267599417529_31.pdf

[yuppie]

Do those rankings include Irelands result against England?

Teams like Ireland need to play full members more often in between WC. Otherwise how will they improve?

I also think Ireland are going to struggle to replace Trent Johnson.

[yuppie]

Also looking at those rankings, how is the USA so far down. I really would think they would have a stronger team with plenty of Expats based over there.

[Jonah58]

They perform badly in Associate competitions, their controlling board is poor, and thats an optimistic appraisal. And they never beat anybody high enough above them to raise their ranking

Those ranking points are well out of date mind these are the current ones http://www.espncricinfo.com/rankings/co ... 11271.html

Zimbabwe will start to climb again now as they are being brought bacvk into the test playing nations from later this year which means that they will get to play test nations so their ranking points will increase while Netherlands and Ireland etc will get very few matches against the 'elite'

[yuppie]

I would just assume that the US would have access to some decent players. I have read in the past that their board has been discredited by the ICC. Even so, i would expect them to have some talent available to them.

It would be good to see teams like Ireland, Holand and Canada be allocated a minimum of 8 games a year against full member teams. When Kenya had 2 good world cups, the ICC seemed to do nothing to aid their developemnt. Though i understand there were some issues with the Kenyan cricket board. Ireland have now had 2 good World Cups, and it seems like they have done this despite the ICC help.

[betterpolo]

Jeez Yuppie, England's World Cup campaign is surreal enough already without them thrashing the Aussies in the Quarters before going out to the Hollywood Cricket Club in the Semis

[Jonah58]

I would just assume that the US would have access to some decent players. I have read in the past that their board has been discredited by the ICC. Even so, i would expect them to have some talent available to them.

It would be good to see teams like Ireland, Holand and Canada be allocated a minimum of 8 games a year against full member teams. When Kenya had 2 good world cups, the ICC seemed to do nothing to aid their developemnt. Though i understand there were some issues with the Kenyan cricket board. Ireland have now had 2 good World Cups, and it seems like they have done this despite the ICC help.

Having lived out there for a while there is a thriving cricket scene in and around Boston and the rest of 'New England' but it is all mainly ex-pats and as betterpolo mentions there is also another cluster around Hollywood, which while smaller and less competitive than the east coast scene is almost exclusively ex-pat.

Aside from that there is minimal interest in the sport in general but some inroads are being made on cable television showing T20 matches which are just about short enough to hold the average american sports fans attention.

[yuppie]

Jeez Yuppie, England's World Cup campaign is surreal enough already without them thrashing the Aussies in the Quarters before going out to the Hollywood Cricket Club in the Semis

[Jonah58]

OK here is a subject that I planned to bring up IF Ireland had continued to show improved performance at the 2015 World Cup. Seeing as that is not going to be allowed to happen I thought, shall I be contentious now? And then said to myself Hell Yeah!

For reasons that make it simple I shall present the case using this excellent analysis by Roy Morgan from the ICU http://www.cricketeurope4.net/DATABASE/ ... 0675.shtml I could try to rip off Roy's piece and present it here but it would lose its impact given he writes better than I do.

To answer some of the objections that I am sure will be raised about 1st class structure in Ireland I will again point out that neither of Zimbabwe or Bangladesh had 1st class structures in place prior to them being granted full test status and funding was given to them by the ICC to create these structures as a condition of full membership. The precedent has already been set.

I admit I do not know what the situation was in SL when they were elevated.

Shall I look forward to an interesting discussion?

[vindalf]

Excellent point. Show the Irish some moolah. Give them time get a domestic structure in place.

Heck, Ireland can even piggy-back on the English county structure in the meantime. That isn't such a stretch, atleast geographically.

Not holding my breath though.

[from_the_stands]

Weirdly, I can see the ICC making a compromise for Ireland, granting them temporary full status and allowing them into the 2015 World as the 11th team... if they make enough noise about being shut out. We'll have to wait and see, though.

[mikesiva]

Cricket can only benefit from having more teams around the world playing the game at the highest level....

I would like to see Ireland playing Tests, especially against the likes of Bangladesh and Zimbabwe for starters, and then possibly against teams such as New Zealand, West Indies and Pakistan.

[Edward Mills Grace]

Weirdly, I can see the ICC making a compromise for Ireland, granting them temporary full status and allowing them into the 2015 World as the 11th team... if they make enough noise about being shut out. We'll have to wait and see, though.

Possibly, but Ireland have, quite rightly, been consistently making the point that their objection to the disgraceful new World Cup policy isn't about Ireland, it's about the right of all the Associates to take part and any legal action will be collective. Hope they stick to that even if divide and rule temptations are palce din front of them.

[ChrisQ]

To answer some of the objections that I am sure will be raised about 1st class structure in Ireland I will again point out that neither of Zimbabwe or Bangladesh had 1st class structures in place prior to them being granted full test status and funding was given to them by the ICC to create these structures as a condition of full membership. The precedent has already been set.

I admit I do not know what the situation was in SL when they were elevated.

Shall I look forward to an interesting discussion?

That's only technically correct.

I did some research on this because of all these claims flying around the internet that Bangladesh had no first class structure before test status in 2000 and from what I can recall:

- No current test nation was ever granted test status without some form of domestic multi-day cricket first. All of them from what I can gather had 3-day domestic cricket before becoming test nations except South Africa which had a 2-day competition (which might account for the reason why they were so bad after getting test status). Bangladesh had 3-day (but not first-class) divisional group matches for their national cricket league in 1999 and probably had such matches going back to at least 1997 (in which year they had a 3-day final which was not first-class). This is separate from Bangladesh's earlier history of multi-day (and even first-class cricket) as East Pakistan from the 1950s to 1971 when it was part of Pakistan. Zimbabwe's first-class cricket competition (the Logan Cup) has been around (but not as a first-class competition) since the early 1900s (sometime between 1899 and 1905 during which the idea came into being and the first competition was played) when JD Logan presented a trophy for competition amongst the then Rhodesia's towns and provinces. Certainly I've never seen anyone show that only 1-day cricket was every played in any of the 10 full members before they became full members. Ireland to the best of my knowledge would be the first to do so if it became a test nation without having any form of domestic multi-day cricket first.

- Prior to about the late 1940s (if I recall correctly), the governance of world cricket was a lot looser and local boards could determine if a match or competition was considered first-class. After that new rules apparently vested recognition of first-class cricket status only with full member nations or the ICC. As both Zimbabwe and Bangladesh gained independence well after the 1940s (1980 and 1971 respectively) they would never have been able to declare their multi-day domestic cricket as first-class without the ICC adjudging it so.

In Sri Lanka the first-class competition (Premier Trophy) has been around since 1938 and has always been multi-day from what I can tell. Certainly in the 1970s it was a 3-day competition and they had multi-day cricket tournaments outside of the main competition which were multi-day from the 1940s (such as the Rohinton Baria trophy) and in the earliest days (1920s-30s) before the Premier Trophy came into being there was a traditional 2-day or 3-day match between domestic teams composed resident Europeans on the one hand and Ceylonese on the other hand. The Sri Lankan competition was given first-class status in the late 1980s (some 7 or so years after Sri Lanka became a full member but decades after 3-day cricket had first been played on the island).

As for Ireland there really is no reason why they can't institute a 3-day competition even without ICC funding. I recall learning sometime ago that the Irish Senior Cup (a 50-over competition) once featured 35 teams (which I counted from the results). If they cut that back to just 12-16 teams that would free up a lot of playing days (primarily on weekends) and money to stage a multi-day competition between 3 teams from North, Northwest and Leinster. To ensure everyone can play it could be a single round-robin competition (so just 3 matches) played over 2 days (Saturday and Sunday) at the beginning and then expanded to 3 non-consecutive days (Saturday, Sunday and then the next Saturday as happens in 3-day league cricket in England, Australia and some other full members - the benefit being that nobody needs to take a day off work) before being played on 3 consecutive days (Friday-Saturday-Sunday or Saturday-Sunday-Monday - so only 2 or 3 days would need to be taken off work for the whole year to participate in the competition).

[Jonah58]

- No current test nation was ever granted test status without some form of domestic multi-day cricket first. All of them from what I can gather had 3-day domestic cricket before becoming test nations except South Africa which had a 2-day competition (which might account for the reason why they were so bad after getting test status). Bangladesh had 3-day (but not first-class) divisional group matches for their national cricket league in 1999 and probably had such matches going back to at least 1997 (in which year they had a 3-day final which was not first-class).

First-class cricket only began in Bangladesh after it was awarded Test status, with the National Cricket League making its debut in 2000-01 (although the competition was actually set up the previous season on a non-first class basis). http://icc-cricket.yahoo.net/the-icc/ic ... BANGLADESH

this was at the point that India and Pakistan were pushing for Bangladesh to become a full member, funds from the ICC were used to create the divisional structure.

Zimbabwe is harder to qualify, the Logan cup yes has been around since Lord Hawke took a team there in 1899, but prior to gaining full member status much of the development of Zim cricketers was done by participation in the Currie Cup in SA.

Even now Ozias Bvute, the managing director of Zimbabwe Cricket says that & I quote

the priorities for Zimbabwe cricket going forward, which are to build a sustainable domestic structure that will enable the team to hold its own in future ICC events