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With the 2015 Cricket World Cup in full swing, the ICC have confirmed that the 2019 version will feature just 10 teams instead of the 14 we have become used to in recent editions.
It will feature the eight full members of the ICC – Australia, New Zealand, England, India, West Indies, Sri Lanka, Pakistan and South Africa – plus two associate members, which include the likes of Bangladesh, Zimbabwe, Ireland, Scotland, Afghanistan the United Arab Emirates.
From a spectator point of view, the group stages are very drawn out, but would be dead and buried without the associate members fighting hard and causing upsets – like we saw when Ireland overcame the West Indies. Without these associate members, the group stages would be even more boring and dull than they are now, even if it was shortened.
Below I have outlined my version of a revamped cricket World Cup for 10 teams.
My first thoughts are why should the full members be given automatic qualification for the World Cup? Who remembers the ICC Champions Trophy? Dull and boring right? Well, not anymore.
Bring it back as a full member World Cup qualifier. The top eight ranked One-Day International teams do battle the year before a World Cup in the country of the cup. Each team would play seven games, one against each other country at the trophy. The four semi-finalists after the round robin not only get to play for the Champions Trophy but are given immediate access to the next version of the Cricket World Cup.
They will also make up the top four ranked sides in the tournament, regardless of the ICC rankings. Whichever countries make the semis are now automatically qualified. Meanwhile, the four teams that missed the semi-finals have to play another tournament in the build-up to the competition.
Directly after the Champions Trophy the top 14 associate member countries arrive in the country hosting the World Cup to play a tournament to see who is given the right to face-off for a qualifying spot. The teams are divided into two groups of seven and play a format similar to the current World Cup. All the teams that make the semi-finals of this ‘associate trophy’ tournament are now into the final World Cup qualifying matches.
So we are left with four teams who have automatically qualified and eight teams who are left to fight it out for six places. How I propose this next pre-tournament works is that the four full member teams would be given the top seeds based on where they finished In the Champions Trophy, while the associate members will be given seeds five to eight.
The eight teams will then play a one-off match in the form of one versus eight, two versus seven, three versus six and four versus five. With six spots available in the World Cup the winners automatically go through, while the losers play-off for the final two spots. So the loser of one versus eight plays the loser of four versus, while the loser of two versus seven takes on the loser of three versus six.
While this is certainly not an ideal qualifying route for the Cricket World Cup to take, there is no way you can deny associate teams a spot in the cup, especially after what we saw with an associate team almost being tipped as favourites over a full member team (Ireland versus West Indies).
The 10 teams in the comp would then be broken into pools of five, with a Super Six stage to follow taking the top three teams from each pool. Then the top four from the Super Six play semis and obviously the winners of the semis play in the grand final.
At the end of the day, cricket is a sport that needs to keep expanding, and the ICC making the World Cup smaller is not going to do this. At least by using these methods, the associates have a very decent chance of being represented by more than Bangladesh and Zimbabwe in the next edition of the World Cup, while they try to rally and get the cup expanded back out to 14 teams.