This whole “ICC preferring a 10-team Test-nation-only World Cup” business has got me thinking on a real left-field tangent of late.
Could anyone imagine other major sporting organisations being allowed to consider the 10 best teams in their respective sports as enough to make up a World Cup?
And further to that, have them play only against each other for three out of every four years leading up to said tournament?
Let’s try it out, shall we, using some of the most recent world rankings lists for notable sports.
As of April 13 this year, the top 10 countries in world football were: Spain, Holland, Brazil, Germany, Argentina, England, Uruguay, Portugal, Italy and Croatia. Would fans accept one all-in group of these sides constituting a World Cup?
And three seasons straight of Brazil-Uruguay friendlies? Would that be a World Cup in Brazil 2014 that was worthy of the title?
Hmmm…
How about rugby union?
Since March 21, the International Rugby Board had the following rankings: New Zealand, Australia, South Africa, Ireland, England, France, Wales, Argentina, Scotland and Fiji.
Would that be a true World Cup? Or should there simply be the Tri-Nations and Six Nations every year and leave it at that?
You can see what I’m getting at here, people.
Basketball? As of the end of last year, the FIBA top 10 were: the USA, Spain, Argentina, Greece, Lithuania, Turkey, Italy, Serbia, Australia and China. A good European Cup could be formed out of that lot, but a World Cup?
Rugby league? The RLIF has Australia, New Zealand, England, Fiji, France, Papua New Guinea, Ireland, Tonga, Scotland and Samoa.
Admittedly, the 2008 league World Cup had 10 teams, with 14 scheduled for 2013 – that’s the kind of format wrangling that sounds about as convoluted as the cricketing version, really.
Finally, surely, netball will make more sense?
The IFNA’s top 10 as of January 2011: New Zealand, Australia, England, Jamaica, Fiji, South Africa, Malawi, Trinidad and Tobago, Samoa, Barbados. That’s arguably coming the closest perhaps to the ICC’s design – you’d get a fairly competitive set of matches there.
However, according to the ICC’s own one-day international rankings as of May 5 – the top 10 in that format of the sport includes Ireland – an Associate nation supposedly barred from the World Cup. That list in full: Australia, India, Sri Lanka, South Africa, England, Pakistan, New Zealand, West Indies, Bangladesh and Ireland. Zimbabwe are number 11.
If the different combinations of 10 teams (as noted above) does not look good enough on paper to the eyes of most fans to deserve the title of World Cup, why should the ICC believe that cricket supporters will accept its definition of the 2015 event?
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