ICC U-turn must be welcomed for the sake of world cricket

The International Cricket Council has just announced that the 2015 World Cup will not, as announced in April, be limited to just ten teams. Instead, the ICC has decided – for the moment at least – to stick by the current fourteen-team tournament.

Inevitably, Ireland has been headlined as the major beneficiary of this apparent U-turn. Supporters of the fourteen-team format have used Ireland as their most prominent argument, understandably considering that the Irish were the only minor nation to have had any real success at the 2011 tournament – most notably, their thrilling three wicket victory over England.

Indeed, the other three non-test-playing nations competing at the competition in India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, were largely disappointing. Kenya and the Netherlands both lost every game; Canada only beat the Kenyans. The gulf in class between the top and lesser teams in cricket is vast, and at times embarrassing for the sport. Where is the value in a contest such as that between New Zealand and Kenya, where the latter struggled to 69 all out, a total that New Zealand rattled off in just 48 balls?

Yet despite such mismatches, I am broadly in favour of the reversal in the ICC stance. There is no easy way to spread cricket to up-and-coming nations, but to limit the World Cup to just the ten test sides would have a devastating impact on the lesser teams’ efforts to develop.

The format of international cricket is dangerously close to being stale as it is. With so few competitive teams, test matches and one-day internationals feature regular match-ups between the same combinations of teams. The World Cup, by contrast, offers a refreshing change, and – as Ireland have proved – the opportunity for a potential shock or two.

The World Cup was at times farcical, as befits a tournament run by the serially incompetent ICC. But others measures – at least two matches every day during the pool stage, a less complex competition set-up – should be implemented rather than starving developing cricketing nations of the only exposure they get to top-level cricket.