Cricket Update: No decision yet to exclude Associates from 2015 World Cup says Dave Richardson
The International Cricket Council has dismissed the fears that it is planning to exclude the associates from Cricket World Cup. A senior ICC official clarified that the proposal of Chief Executive Committee (CEC) to limit the number of teams for the 2015
World Cup to 10 is merely a proposal and presently there are no such plans to do so.
This proposal was heavily criticized by the associate nations soon after it came to light. But, ICC's General Manager on Cricket, Dave http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Richardson-c85395 has told the reporters that this would remain a proposal until and unless all cricket playing nations unanimously
agree to it.
He said that the committee hasn’t yet worked out the qualification procedure for 2015 World Cup so it would be premature to comment on it beforehand. "How the ten members are to be determined is still to be decided. It could be the full members only but
it could be not", said Richardson.
The proposal was made at the CEC meeting held in Cape Town, http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Bangladesh-c747, would feature 14 countries as compared to 16 in the 2007 World Cup. The CEC, which includes
three representatives of associate and affiliate members also, suggested that the number of teams for the 2015 World Cup should be reduced to 10 while increasing the number in World T20 tournament to 16.
The three representatives of associate and affiliate members in CEC included Warren Deutrom (CEO http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Namibia-c2964). The associate members welcomed the proposal of increasing the number of teams for
World T20 but at the same time they explicitly told the CEC that this shouldn’t be a trade-off for a shorter 50-over World Cup.
The ICC GM Richardson stressed that nowhere in the CEC’s proposal it has been mentioned that the associate or affiliate members cannot participate in the World Cup. "They haven't said they would exclude associates; nowhere has anyone said, at this stage,
the decision is to allow only full members to participate in the World Cup," said Richardson.
He added that the rationale behind this proposal was to enhance the brand value of the game by improving the quality of product. "The main reason was: it's easier for teams to be competitive in the 20-over version rather than in the 50-over version. There
is nothing worse than a one-sided 50-over game. So one of the major reasons was to increase the quality of the matches (in ODI World Cup)," and this according to Richardson, could be done by reducing the number of participants in the 50-over event.
Regarding the qualification procedure, Richardson stated that the issue would be determined by the governance review committee which will then submit its findings to the ICC’s executive board but he made it clear that there is no definitive time-frame for
that.
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