The ICC Associates seldom get to play against the Full Members, which is not good for the expansion of cricket.
The West Indies needed only 137 to beat Papua New Guinea at Providence, and Brandon King wiped out eight of these inside the first over. It seemed to be a formality, even after Alei Nao trapped Johnson Charles leg-before with his first ball.
Three balls later, Nao hit Nicholas Pooran on the pads. The Papua New Guineans went up in unison. No, said umpire Rashid Riaz. Captain Assad Vala did not review – he probably felt the ball would have pitched outside the leg stump – but replays revealed three “reds”.
Did it matter? Pooran made an uncharacteristically slow run-a-ball 27 as the PNG bowlers stuck to a wicket-to-wicket line, often taking the pace off the ball, forcing the hosts to take risks. It was an important innings, given the context: though the West Indies won with an over to spare, they were 97-5 at one point. With Pooran, however, it was more about what he could have done. Even with that slow innings, no batter has scored more T20 runs than Pooran this year at a quicker rate. That was the wicket PNG were hesitant to claim for fear of losing a review.
Perhaps the solution lies in Full Members touring Associate Nations while touring other Full Members. When teams visits Australia or New Zealand, they can play a brief series in Papua New Guinea; likewise, Nepal or the UAE on a tour of subcontinent; and so on. If these tours are difficult to arrange, for logistic or other reasons, the Full Members can always play Associates in other Full Members. For example, teams can play Scotland or the Netherlands in England on a tour of England, or Namibia in South Africa. If these tours become part of the four-year FTPs, things will change over time.
An alternative way to boost the quality of teams is to make it mandatory for Full Members to include nearby Associate Members team in their domestic tournaments. This has precedent. New Zealand played as a team in the One-Day Cup in Australia in the first six seasons of the One-Day Cup, from 1969/70 to 1974/75. Scotland and Ireland were part of the Benson & Hedges Cup in England for years. There are myriad examples of “A” teams appearing in domestic competitions of other nations.
Whether the ICC takes further efforts remains to be seen, but the current scenario remains suboptimal. And while we are on the ICC’s attempts at making cricket a global sport, where are the commentators from the Associate Nations in the T20 World Cup panel with insights built over years of watching the teams play away from the focus?
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