World Cricketers Association takes on a global challenge: part one

Let's start by saying that the report released by the World Cricketers Association on March 26, entitled Protect history, embrace change: a uniform, coherent global futureIs the first real sign of hope in World Cricket, because Lord Woolfs Review was dumped without mercy by the BCCI and his allies in 2012.

Produced by a subcommittee of nine and largely based on interviews with 64 senior stakeholders representatives, the report includes four main areas of sports planning, economy, regulations and leadership and the view of the ICC and the current state of the worldwide is almost as scarend, as is more diplomatic, such as that of Woolf itself.

About three central questions, namely the need for meaningful international competitions in all three formats, for the replacement of the current formula for income distribution by one focused on equity and global growth, and for leadership that an important international sport is worth it, the attraction is unanswerable and should be irresistible.

Whether that will turn out to be the case, and whether we will see the robust and balanced debate that the reports that authors ask for, can still be viewed, but given the earlier form of the ICCS masters, and the route cricket has been followed since the Woolf rating, a certain degree of skepticism seems to be in order order.

Still and everything, we have to start somewhere, so what follows is a first shot in what someone hopes will be a long and fruitful discussion.

After I have just published a history of the ICC, I have a fairly strong views on which pieces of the game history are worth protecting, and as a lifelong lover of cricket, even stronger, about which types of change we have to embrace.

There is much to chew here, too much for one article, so I propose to break my first reaction in three, to give the problems the kind of room that I believe they deserve.

About competitions and planning, then the WCA scheme for a 24-team, three-division Mens ODI competition and a 32-team, four-division T20i League, together with two divisions of 16 and 24 teams for women ODI and T20i-competitions, seems a reasonable starting point. That context gives context.

It is understandable that the report at this stage is not in detail about which structures can be introduced under these global competitions, although his mind would suggest that something that approaches the regional competitions that used to be fed the World Cricket League would ultimately be needed.

However, more serious than this omission is what I see as three big weaknesses in the proposals.

The most far -reaching is that the central requirement of what the report defines as a core international cricket must be at least one match per classification against each opponent over a two -year cycle.

It is true, a recognition that series of more than one competition would be possible, and that in practice there is no reason why valued 5-match series could not continue under the recommended structure.

That gives a permit for Australia, England and India to go on a privilege with the privilege of money-spinning series against each other, but someone seriously believes that the approval of that minimum of one match would not lead to a radical reduction in the international scheme of almost any other ICC-FULLY member?

That seems to be at the point, given that a few pages later the example calendars allow four 21-day windows for international cricket throughout the year, leaving more than 60 percent of the program for what the report calls the free market.

Come back to that immediately.

Radical such as the car proposals are in many ways, their nerve seems to have failed them when it comes to testing cricket, both for men and for women.

Their schedule for the world test championship provides two divisions of eight and four teams, so that the only real changes are that another team would join Zimbabwe, Afghanistan and Ireland in the lower division, and that there would be promotion and relegation between the two.

It is of course true that the protection of the brand test cricket since the foundation in 1909 is a central obsession of the ICC, and that the admission of new members to that holy space has been a source of bitter Argy-Bargy and shameless politics for decades.

Suggestions from a possible second division of test countries have come and gone, just like the only real innovative measure, the late intercontinental cup, the first -class competition that cleared the way for the admission of Afghanistan and Ireland to a form of test status, although of course not to the world test championship.

So if there was a real wish to expand the principles of meaningful, growing competition in all three formats, it would be the simplicity itself to re-introduce the ICUP, perhaps with two divisions of six teams of the WTC and the ICUP underneath.

And if the shrinking violets with the test status were worried about degrading degraded, you could set a play-off to confirm promotion, giving them a chance to prove that they were worthy of their Current spot.

There is a similar reluctance about women's tests, where in 2029 there is only a recommendation for a further assessment of multi-format series.

At the moment only played by Australia, England and India (does anyone notice a pattern on this, albeit with some South African participation?), These hybrid series are one of the few really good ideas that the ICC has come up with in the past fifteen years, and it should be a no-brainer to expand them at least.

Regarding the proposed 84-day value of Windows for Core International Cricket, the first thing to say, is that one of the most radical movements of the WCA has been to switch the discussion of an international calendar with windows for franchise competitions to a free market calendar with windows for international cricket.

And here we come across one of the fundamental splits at the subcommittees that think: the WCA is, after all, a trade union and one of the central themes of the report is the maximization of players who earn capacity more room to fill their year with lucrative contracts in the short term.

No one can deny that professional cricketers were historically underpaid in an almost criminal degree, and that life is still precarious for many, nowhere more than in the eternal Cash-Strapped ICC employees.

But one of the consequences of the IPL and his descendants is that the income of the top players have grown into near-Ludicrous levels, while those of many of their teammates have not kept track of.

In the late capitalist world in which we live, this is hardly surprising, but it is a fair question whether much deregulation and an uncritical embrace of the free market is really the best way ahead.

International windows in a club-based calendar are true, known from football, but there is a big difference between a few 90 minutes of football matches and even a short ODI series, let alone cricket test.

This could suspect, the underlying reason is for the proposed minimum of one match for Core International Cricket Series, although undoubtedly also has a lot to do with money.

And it's up to the money we have to run now.