As we come to the culmination of the World Cup qualifying cycle it is a natural time to reflect.
There is of course much to analyse in performances, emerging players and which team’s fortunes are waxing and which waning. But today I’m going to take the opportunity to consider a few broader development themes.
50 overs as the longest format
With the sad demise of the Intercontinental Cup, 50 overs became the long format for Associate nations. We are all aware of the limitations of T20 as a format, even though it can be a thrilling one and is well suited to modern entertainment appetites, so 50-over cricket is the opportunity to showcase more traditional attributes of technique and application.
There remains an influential lobby (including some excruciatingly myopic famous commentators) who favour limiting 50-over World Cups to just the leading teams and it has been a struggle, in the context of maximising short term broadcast revenue being the beginning and end of anything amounting to a strategy on the issue, to make a case for a more inclusive approach.
So given this there is close scrutiny on how competitive associate nations are in the 50 over format. The current cycle has shown that there have been a good number of competitive, exciting games with no little quality on show.
However, there is also a worrying trend of teams not using all the overs: of taking a T20 approach and struggling to last for even 35 to 40 overs. And that I’m afraid is grist to the mill of the cynics and detractors. Not that this should be particularly surprising given the paucity of 50-over games in domestic cricket. England for instance have the same issue, so it is definitely not a vulnerability exclusive to Associates.
Two questions leap out for interrogation for me: firstly whether this is just an inevitable consequence of what you may wish to call progress? (i.e. the game is evolving and 50 over cricket will inevitably be a casualty) and secondly whether it is right to frame T20 exclusively as cricket’s development vehicle?
On the latter question while T20I status has been very positive and democratising for many associates and forms the basis of their development model, for the stronger associates being pidgeonholed exclusively as T20 teams would be damaging. It is a lazy approach that is enthusiastically endorsed mainly because T20 is a cheaper format to run global tournaments and the ICC want to make money not spend money.
My view has always been that cricket fans enjoy seeing associate teams at World Cups because it adds colour, variety and interest. Supporting the underdog is a crucial and romantic element of all sports. The blocker is therefore not the fans but the fixation on prioritising short term broadcast revenue over the longer term global health of the game (but for brevity’s sake I won’t revisit Lord Woolf’s conclusions!).
Home grown talent
I’ll declare at the outset that this is a sensitive issue. There are some who say that as long as players meet eligibility criteria it is irrelevant what their background is. I think it is a bit more nuanced than that. It is of course true that the game should be inclusive and everyone should be welcomed and embraced. However, it is also true that the foundations for sustainable success and growth come from cricket achieving cultural cut-through across a broad range of communities. Without this it is destined to be a minority sport that struggles to get national visibility and support, high participation levels etc.
Now we shouldn’t be naïve. Full cultural cut-through won’t be possible in all countries. A large dose of pragmatism is required. But there are things that can be done to help. I’ve been watching closely how successful teams have been in introducing players from youth programmes into the senior side. Examples such as Cedric De Lange and Sai Mukkumalla are very heartening.
Unfortunately many teams have a tendency to rely on players who have learnt their cricket in a Full Member and give them international debuts after the age of 30. Of course there will always be a role for these experienced hands but I think there is an issue if this becomes the default.
Personally I would rather see a team flourish that have invested in their player pathway than a team predominantly playing older ex-pats. It also shouldn’t be underestimated how this issue plays into perceptions of the game below test level. Cricket fans want to see cricket growing in a country.
The old development scorecard funding model was intended to incentivise a development focused approach. The reality though is that performance in key tournaments is a bigger determinant of progress than having an excellent development programme. So that inevitably becomes the focus. And you can’t blame teams for that, they are merely playing by the rules of the game they are in.
But there is a risk that a series of very rational, sensible individual decisions can lead to an outcome that isn’t optimal. I’d encourage all countries to take a longer term view even if they have to weather some short term pain against teams who have less progressive selection policies. My hope is that in the next World Cup cycle we see an increase in the percentage of players progressing from development pathways.
Interventions to arrest decline
The last theme I’d like to focus on is how to arrest the decline of teams. It is a matter of great sadness to have witnessed the decline in Kenyan cricket since the 2003 World Cup and we now seem to be seeing something similar with Papua New Guinea.
We can’t just allow this atrophy to set in. The ICC, regional bodies and national governments need to be more agile in spotting vulnerabilities and ensure that available funding is targeted wisely. I know that a lot of people will be working really hard to do that but at the sporting governance level this needs to be addressed.
It shouldn’t just be a focus on exciting emerging markets like USA, Japan etc but also on retaining historic centres of the game to help them bounce back. It just can’t be right that a run of poor results on the field, which could be due in part to injuries, availability etc, could see years of progress and development reversed. There have been times when it has felt like the incredible risk of Afghanistan has deflected from teams on the slide. Clearly a press release will always highlight the positive and stay silent on the negative. And that is why thorough, fair-minded journalistic focus on the non-Test game is important.
I’m not saying I have the answers to arresting decline, and clearly if the fix was easy it would have been done. I just think the seeming inevitability of it needs to be challenged and addressed.
The chasing pack
In parallel to the drama of League 2 and the Challenge Leagues there has also been the jockeying of position in the T20I rankings for a chance to qualify for the next World Cup qualifying cycle. This has ranged from countries who are seeking to regain a foothold, like Bermuda and Malaysia, to aspiring teams like Spain and Portugal who have not been involved before.
For Spain this involved a very targeted approach to maximising ranking points and for Portugal it focused on luring famous names from the diaspora like Moises Henriques to turn out for them. Time will tell whether any aspirants break into the qualifying process. If they don’t, their attention will revert to T20 WC qualification which is more open. The interesting question for me in relation to this is whether teams decide to focus entirely on the national squad itself, in the hope those individuals can get them a few rungs up the ladder, or whether they take a longer term view and strengthen the foundations of the game more broadly, through for instance building participation levels, setting up school programmes etc.
It goes without saying that for almost everyone the only visible sign of progress is success on the field, a casual glance at a scorecard. And yet building a sustainable player base is the more impressive achievement. And that speaks to how fickle perceptions of cricket development can be.
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