The ICC’s executive board will discuss again the composition of the 2015 World Cup during the ICC ‘s annual conference in Hong Kong in end-June. This follows a request from the president Sharad Pawar, in response to strong and widespread criticism of the ICC’s decision to drop the Associate members from the 2015 tournament.
“I have given this matter further serious thought and will request the Board to consider this topic once more,” Pawar said. “I can understand the views of the Associates and Affiliates and the ICC will seek to deal with this issue in the best way possible.”
Over the past few days, the Associate members had met and discussed among themselves how best to handle the decision; those discussions resulted in a letter being sent to the ICC.
“We’ve done a great deal of research over the last week, particularly Warren Deutrom of Ireland, we’ve had a lot of letters of support, we’ve also had some experienced sports lawyers contacting us offering us help,” Richard Cox, CEO of the Netherlands board, told ESPNcricinfo. “On that basis we felt we were at least able to contest the decision around qualification and the opportunity to qualify which is what we’ve done.”
At its meeting on April 4, two days after the World Cup final, the ICC board decided to allow only the ten full members in the 2015 edition to be hosted in Australia. The board had also agreed that the ten-team format would be in place for the 2019 World Cup in England as well, though there would be a qualification process involving the Associates.
The recently concluded World Cup, which has been largely hailed as a success, featured 14 teams, and the league stage was played in two groups of seven each, with the top eight playing the quarter-finals. The proposal to trim the event meant that a team such as Ireland, which had two successful World Cups, would not be a part of the next tournament. To compensate, the World Twenty20 was expanded to 16 teams, giving six Associate or Affiliate members a chance to play in a premier world event every two years, but no matter how well they perform there, they did not have a chance to make the cut for the 2015 50-over World Cup. Pawar’s intervention could yet change that.