It will surprise nobody that the ICC Executive Board, meeting on Monday, rubber-stamped the proposal for a two-part qualification process for the 2015 World Cup, with the first element based on its new One-Day League.

While the decision to hold a qualifying tournament deserves an unequivocal welcome, the other side of the deal invites severe criticism, both procedurally and in substance.

For the second time in a matter of months, the ICC has changed the basis of a competitive process after it has started; first, it reduced the number of qualification places available for the 2012 World Twenty20 qualifier from six to two after several of the regional feeder tournaments had been held, largely making nonsense of the 16-team event which will take place in the UAE in March.

In the case of the ODL, the first matches had already been played when the eight participating countries were informed that results in this competition, in origin a formalisation of the one-day matches which have run parallel to the first-class Intercontinental Cup, would now determine two of the places in the 2015 World Cup.

This scheme is, of course, a by-product of the woefully-mismanaged proposal for a ten-team, all-Full-member World Cup. When the Executive Board was forced by the global outcry against this iniquitous idea to revert to a 14-team World Cup, it had to confront the issue of how the qualifiers would be determined.

There was no question of any process which might allow the leading Associates, now part of the main ODI ranking system, to squeeze in at the expense of the weaker Full members, so the most straightforward solution would have been a repeat of the successful 2009 tournament, in which twelve Associates and Affiliates battled for the four available spots.

It is not clear why the ICC decided against this option: perhaps it saw the alternative as a way of giving more significance to its new ODL, effectively Division 2 of the ODI League which is now to be contested by the Full members.

The first two games in the new competition, between Scotland and the Netherlands, were played at the end of June, and in the course of July Namibia had visited Ireland and the UAE had played in Kenya. In all these matches at least one of the sides was weakened by absences of senior players, some of whom might well have been selected had their significance been fully apparent at the time.

But quite apart from the procedural impropriety of the decision being made after the competition had started, it sets up a playing-field for World Cup qualification which is essentially uneven.

The fundamental problem is that some of the participating countries can be sure of fielding their strongest side in every game, while others – specifically Ireland, the Netherlands and Scotland – can not. With some of their leading players on contract to first-class teams in Full member countries, these sides will face a battle to compete on level terms.

At the very least, the ICC owes it to its Associate members to ensure that the mandatory release system works as effectively for them as it does for the Full members, although we all know how complicated that can be: players, understandably concerned about their careers, can be subjected to subtle pressures, and clearly suffer from conflicts of loyalty.

There is no doubt that it is easier for the Associates to secure the availability of their top players for global qualifying tournaments than for individual series of matches – although even that is not always straightforward, as the early departure of Eoin Morgan (then an Ireland player) and Ryan ten Doeschate from the 2009 World Cup qualifier illustrates.

Ireland have so far been fortunate in having their county-contracted players available for their ODL games, but there is no guarantee that that will be the case in the future, however effectively Cricket Ireland has managed its relations with the counties concerned.

For all its talk of ‘meritocratic pathways’ the ICC seems to care little about either consistent , thought-through policies or fairness to its Associate and Affiliate members, and this is one more instance of the poor governance which has been so evident over the past twelve months.

Among the issues which this ad hoc decision-making process has raised but as yet failed to resolve is the implication of the advent of the ODL for the World Cricket League: is the former now effectively Division 1 of the latter? A competent organisation would determine these matters before implementing the new structure, but that would require a level of consistency and responsibility of which the ICC Executive Board and its committees are apparently incapable.

It is, therefore, a particularly welcome development that the Board agreed on Monday to publish Lord Woolf’s governance review when he reports next February. It’s a measure of how little trust there is in the Executive Board that there should ever have been any doubt on this point, but that should not detract from the cricket world’s satisfaction that Lord Woolf’s view will be made known.

And we can only hope that he spells out in all its painful detail just why the ICC falls so far short of being the ‘well governed and leading global sporting organisation’ it allegedly aspires to be.

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