Opinion: England must incorporate Netherlands in C&G Trophy

Why they must? Because only they can.

C&G Trophy exposure, like the one given to Scotland and Ireland this year is an excellent oppurtunity for the associate nations. First of all, they play against many of the best, a standard much higher than what they will be able to muster on their own, and even higher than what most other domestic teams from other countries will be able to offer them on a tour. Secondly, it is great for exposure. A very talented player, performing well, will get a look in by the counties, perhaps for a stint as a second XI or perhaps even first XI player. But the most important thing is that the whole thing is played out over 3 months, on weekends, so nobody has to take time off from work, like Netherlands has to on a tour otherwise. The thing is that only a few countries can technically participate in the English domestic season; France, Belgium, Ireland, Scotland and Netherlands. The first two are not at the level where they can compete with counties, the third and 4th are already playing in the tournament. So that leaves only Netherlands (I am assuming that it would be too much of travel for Denmark to undertake, and I also dont think they would be that competitive against full county sides). England have to incorporate them to raise their standard, because if they dont, its not like India is going to do so. England being the only European cricket powerhouse has a tougher task of single handedly assisting the other associates. Once the associates become strong enough on their own, England can always take a back step and split the duties on development.

News: Another joke by Canada

After their masterful performance in the Tri Nation series with Zim and Bermuda, before which this nation owning an ODI tag could not even get their team together to practise, it looks like Canada have fired their PR person, and get this, according to Crickinfo, it was done because he was doing too good a job in too short of a time !!!!!

Now, here is my question. Canada is supposed to have around 15K cricketers, expats or whatever you want to call them. Why could they not care less about this? Why nothing in the media, no heated discussions on any websites etc? Nothing at all. Could it be….. excuse me for even thinking…. that they could not care less?

Regarding the Mayor playing cricket, I thought it was an excellent PR move by the person who just got fired. Also, I read some of this outgoing guy’s views on getting the image of cricket higher in Canada etc through canadacricket.com I think, and they were good views, amde a lot of sense, showed someone who understood cricket management and also Canada’s culture, and someone who was taking out the time to do something for the game over there.

And the president of the CCA is living in a dream world, thinking of Canada playing Test Cricket in 10 years, and also of $300 million coming in for the support of Canadian Cricket. It baffles me at times how much the presidents of USA and Canada Cricket have no idea about the low standards of their own countries or the high standards of other countries. The US Cricket Association also had in their objectives to achieve ODI status by 2005!?!?! All they achieved was a loss to Uganda and Oman in the 2005 ICC Trophy.  

I once asked Nick Deverell that such goofy things can only be done when the country overall does not really care about the sport. Thats the only way that people can take decisions on personal whims and grudges and get away with it, because the public doesnt care. He said that this was not true for Kenya, or other countries where the buearocratic system was such that even if people cared they couldnt do anything. I will take his word for it about Kenya. But unless my geography is really bad, Canada is not an African dictatorship, and such things should not have happenned, unless….. you guessed it…… nobody really cares that much.

News: Netherlands beat MCC

Dan Van Bunge scored 70 of 116 balls while Tim De Leede scored 63 of 75 balls as Netherlands beat MCC by 53 runs in Rottterdam. For the Netherlands bowling, their main problem, Mark Jonkman did pretty well with a spell of 8-1-33-2 while Peter Borren ended up with 8-0-28-2. Netherlands total score was a very competitive 265.

First, a little perspective. Brown, Cairns and Nabi were missing from the MCC team from their previous matches. So this MCC team was a fairly weaker than the previous games. But at the same time, the Dutch didnt have Zuiderant, Ten Doeschate, Reekers, Schifferli or Van Troost, and they were playing both Smits and Buurman. So technically it was not the best Dutch team either.

One thing I dont understand is how come Pieter Seelaar, a spinner, opened the bowling attack? Netherlands perhaps should have tried 2 pace bowlers, but I think both Reekers and Stelling are fit now, and are available to play in the Sri Lanka games. Also, it seems that Ten Doeschate will be released by Essex for the Sri Lanka matches, so thats the biggest boost Netherlands could have recieved.

News: Denmark thrash Kenya A

Well well. Looks like all those common sense indicators that told us that this was going to be a mismatch were correct after all. Denmark beat Kenya A by 113 runs, and Kenya A could not even bat out 32 overs. I dont know from where Kooperholdt and Klokker showed up in the Danish team given that there was an annoucement that only a Denmark A team would play this match. Thomas Hansen, their top bowler, was missing, and so were Carston Pederson, Michael Pederson, B Singh and Zeeshan Shah.

Despite that Kenya A lost out to them. Now, in about 3 years time, I think this IS going to be the Kenya team. So the ICC may have done a good job in asking them to qualify again in 2009 for ODI status and the world cup, because at the momment, it doesnt look like these A team lads will be able to do so.

Then again, who knows. Maybe Kenya will beat the full strength Danish team tommorrow and turn the tour on its head. Going by their current performances, I dont think so.

Opinion: ICCs basic flaws in global expansion

There are, in my opinion, at least 4 basic flaws in ICCs current approach to the development of the game in other countries. We tend to think that perhaps cricket is an extremely difficult sport and that it takes 2-3 generations for players to come up to a certain competitive standard. This is slightly true, but I think the fault lies elsewhere.

I will try to highlight the points below. If others have an opinion on these, or would like to mention their own points, it will be great.

1) Deemed Nationals and Nationals
Why is it that a person residing for 183 days per year for 4 years is a deemed national?? People living in UAE for 30 years have not been given a nationality, while a regular work permit in the USA is for 6 years. This means that a temporary worker in the US, who comes from South Asia, can actually represent the US in cricket matches in the last 2 years of his temporary stay !?!?! This is just weird. Secondly, a person who has been residing in a country for 7 years becomes a national in ICCs eyes, and the associate team can have as many of these as they want in their squad.

I dont think I need to go into the details for this. But the ICC needs to do 2 things. First, change the definition of a deemed national to one who has resided in the country for 7 years, at least 9 months out of 12 per year. Allow only 2 deemed nationals per team. And apart from that, the only people allowed to play for that country should be citizens.

2) Lack of TV policy
ICC needs to realize that they need to get the partiticipation levels up in top associates to at least 50-100K people. They cant be stuck at the single digit thousand that they are stuck at right now. One way it to wait for a 100 years, let them go from 5K-6K one year, then 7K the next year and so on. But that way they will also lose players who are interested faster than they get the new ones in. The only way to get hige numbers interested quickly is to give a free feed from live cricket matches to the top associates, or to countries which are not considered potential markets (Japan, Argentina, italy etc.). This is the era of cable and sattelite television, not broadcast any more. It costs zilch for a cable or sattelite provider to dedicate a channel to cricket, especially if he is getting the feed for free. Give it to the top associates on an experimental basis for 4-5 years, and then see what happens. ICC can even start selling the TV rights to those countries afterwards for some money if that is the case. Why do you think there is so much interest and so much high playing numbers in South Asian countries like Nepal, Afghanistan, Maldives and Bhutan? It is precisely becasue there are 3 channels dedicated to cricket that they get for free due to being in the South Asian region.

3) Serious Lack of Benchmarking tournaments
So how does Scotland rank with Zim or Bangladesh? How good actually is Afghanistan compared to Bermuda or Canada? Nepal lost out to Namibia, but Bermuda also lost out to Namibia recently so how far back is Nepal from Bermuda? If at all? Uganda has improved quite a lot since their ICC Trophy debacle, but many say that was because the players could not adjust to the weather in Ireland coming from hot African summer. Is Bermuda also going to outplay Uganda IN Uganda NOW? All of these questions are just questions, and the ICC doesnt even know the answers to them itself. While the WCQS is a good structure to get everyone involved for World Cup qualification, why are other benchmarking tournaments not held to find out the truth of the standards in the current year? Why isnt a ranking system developed to incorporate all the international games played irrespective of whether they are ODI or not? ICC needs to hold the benchmarking tournaments on a regular basis to find out which country to invest in, and in what area. It cannot just wait for 4 years to dole out the money to the top 6 from the ICC Trophy (though the fact that they are doing even that is much better than before)

4) Tying development funds to performance ONLY
FIFA can be objective because it is FIFA, and there are 100 countries in the world where football is a passion, and at least 30 that can make it to the quarter final of the world cup. Even from the current FIFA world cup 2006 good teams like Nigeria, Uruguay, Cameroon, Turkey, Denmark and Greece are sitting out. ICC is not FIFA, and it should not try to be either. Some common sense it needed when they dole out development money and it should not be winner takes all for the ICC trophy alone. Countries like PNG, Nepal, Uganda, Malaysia could not achieve anything in the ICC trophy, or did not qualify at all. Yet these are the countries that have an actual chance of doing anything given a bit of support. Not USA that fielded the oldest team to ever play an ODI. Money dished out in these countries would actually help them in raising their standard more because at least there is some spark which is shown that can be capitalized on. With countries like USA and UAE, you dont even know where to start off with. The real problem is that if these countries are not supported now that they are showing interest and doing something about cricket, they will probably lose interest and start playing something else.