Opinion: Lack of benchmarking tournaments……

The ICCs regulations for full member criteria clearly define that they would be looking at the performances of a country at 3 levels. The national level, the U19 level, and the A team level (this should be the second XI level rather than the strict A team definition).
While there is always talk of the lack [...]

Opinion: So much for the final…….

Game over in 2 days…… Canada never even in the match and losing by an innings.
Lets not debate about that, there is nothing to talk about from the match……..
So Ireland have the world number 10 ranking, 1 higher than a test team that just got $12m. They are multi day cricket champs at the associate [...]

News: Rankin possible consideration for England A?

There we go again……. Joyce first, Morgan in line, now Rankin a possibility…….. England might as well look at O Briens and Porterfield as well…… then once they have all played a game here and there for England A, or higher, and hence made themselves unavailable for Ireland, we can sit down and critisize the [...]

News: Upcoming Associate v Test Nation ODIs…..

23 June: Ireland v India, Belfast
24 June: Ireland v South Africa, Belfast
01 July: Scotland v Pakistan, Edinburgh
10 July: Netherlands v West Indies, Dublin
12 July: West Indies v Scotland, Dublin 
14 July: Ireland v West Indies, Dublin
16 August: Scotland v India, Glasgow
So there are 7 such games being played this year as opposed to last year’s 4. [...]

Opinion: Reading into the Kenya/ Zimbabwe game……

A couple of days back, Kenya Select XI took on Zimbabwe A in a 4 day match. Zimbabwe A ended up winning that game….. a bit of fight from Kenya, but not enough.
The thing is…… the Kenya select was not an A side, it was actually more than an A side. 7 of their players were [...]

News: Zim gets $12m for WC participation……..

It is strange that this this piece of news for the first time has saddenned me.
Zim, on the account of being a test team, which technically they are not, get that much money for their particiaption in the tournament, while Ireland, that stayed 1 month longer than them get around $1m for participation.
The reason why [...]

News: Associate ODIs v Test Nations…….

So it looks like some of the ODIs taking place between the European associates and the Test nations have been chalked out for the coming summer. All of Scotland, Ireland and Netherlands will be taking on the WI, and one of them will be taking them on once again in the final. I know that [...]

Opinion: WCL Div 3 Preview……

So, we now have the WCL Div 3 coming up with 8 teams participating…….. there are 8 teams in all, divided in 2 pools. The teams are Uganda, PNG, Fiji, Hong Kong, Argentina, Cayman Islands, Italy and Tanzania.
I think that Uganda and PNG should take this one and be in the finals without any problems. These 2 [...]

Opinion: A better world cup format……..

I remember reading the original format for the world cup 2007 2-3 years back. It was the one that was also used in the MLB World Championship in 2006. The first round would be the same as it was this year, followed by a second stage. The second stage would be 2 groups of 4 [...]

Mozambique, Bahamas in WCL Division 5?

I’m going to cut straight to the chase. Why are Mozambique and Bahamas participating in WCL Division 5, when there are at at least 20 countries who are more developed and have stronger national teams than them, who arent?
 I say to hell with this policy of equal representation of all the continents at these events. [...]