ICCynical money grab

Adil Rashid must know how the Irish feel today. A number of times he's shone with bat and ball in ODIs for England only to be dropped for an extra batsman. Ireland's reward for beating Pakistan four years ago and England this time around is to be excluded from the next World Cup.

Of course, it's not Ireland specifically but all associates and affiliates. UAE, Namibia, Canada, Kenya, Afghanistan, Bermuda are all sides that have provided entertainment in World Cups down the years - admittedly not always for the right reasons - as well as Ireland, but the ICC have, in their eternal wisdom, decided that there are more than enough teams wanting to play international cricket and that'll do us nicely thank you.

Instead of an actual World Cup, we'll be having Champions Trophies from now on. Yes, there's a sop to expanding the game for the 2019 tournament with the promise of a qualification period, but what state will the associates be in by then? Ireland made the choice to withdraw from the English county scene and go their own way. Having been granted full ODI status after the 2007 World Cup, the extra funding they receive from the ICC enabled them to pay some of their players within their domestic structure and organise ODI series against full members. Without the chance to play in a World Cup for eight years, the talent drain to England can only increase. After all, what incentive is there for such as George Dockrell to hang about waiting until such time as the ICC deem his nation worthy? If he and others like him are serious about making it as an international cricketer, it's unlikely that the extra T20 places will make any difference to the decisions he makes over the next few years.

If the problem was a bloated tournament with too many dead rubbers, the sacrifice is the wrong one. The tournament just gone could have been massively shrunk by playing two games per day in the group stage and not stringing it out so India could play on weekends to maximise TV audiences. The 2007 format would have been about right had there not been a second group stage - a concept even UEFA did away with eventually - and instead gone straight to knockout as the successful T20 tournaments have done. Even a preliminary round for associates to progress to the main competition would be preferable to complete exclusion.

After getting burned by fancied runners not getting through their group in 2007 - Ireland knocking out Pakistan, Bangladesh seeing to India - the 2011 format was specifically designed to ensure it wouldn't happen again. Obviously the performances of the associates - especially Ireland, Holland to a lesser extent - gave the ICC enough of a fright that it might happen again and TV audiences would suffer as a result. So better than contrive something that stands a remote chance of failure, better to eliminate that as a possibility altogether. It's cyncial and we can all see why they're doing it, but it's not in the interests of cricket and as guardians of the world game, that ought to be their prime motive. This is an old boy's network closing ranks and keeping the spoils for themselves.

So no more John Davison slamfunking a hundred. No more Kevin O'Brien slaughtering the English. No more Dwayne Leverock's amazing catch. No more Ryan ten Doeschate making two hundreds in the tournament, just like Sachin did. No more chance of a fairytale like Afghanistan's attempts to qualify came so close to giving us. No more Sultan Zarawani getting clonked on his unprotected napper. No more use of Balaji Rao's massive thighs to catch a ball. No more Namibian side made up entirely of people called Burger. No more Hiral Patel taking on the best of Shaun Tait. No more Rizwan Cheema. No more Peter Borren and his mad, killers eyes. And shame on you, ICC, for making that so.

ICC Say No to Associates at CWC 2015

I have been struggling to put into words what I think about this decision. But I am hopefully going to sum it up in two.

Utter bollocks.

Here endeth my rant.

Refer madness

The mercilessly brief hiatus will soon be over. Referrals are coming back, this time for good. For shame.

Everything is worth trying once except incest and morris dancing, as the old saying has it, and if you don't try something you will never find out whether it works or not. But the referral system has been tried and it's been found to be an ass. In trying to produce results that only operate in black and white, all that's happened is the vast swathes of grey have become vaster. The video umpire has been a boon, especially with stumpings and run outs, and perhaps widening that role is more worthy of attention - for example checking whether a ball pitched in line for lbw decisions - than leaving it in the hands of the players.

The time it takes up is another thing and when it's being used to check on a number eleven's middle stump cartwheeling out of the ground, simply because the batting side have a referral left in the bank, then it goes from irritant to piss-take. In the trials, it hasn't proved to result in better decisions. The arguable ones are largely subject to benefit of the doubt anyway, and where there's any hint of doubt it goes to the batting side, same as it always has. Video replays rarely if ever give conclusive evidence to suggest the initial decision requires overturning, therefore it seems a colossal waste of time and energy.


The continuing debate over the best colour for balls goes on while fines are doubled for slow over rates. Your current correspondent has a real bee in his bonnet about the latter, but fines won't do it, at least not on their own. Ally swingeing fines and suspensions to run penalties. When sides are losing games because of their own indolence, then you'll see them get a shift on.