Two contrasting play-off matches decided places from 07th – 10th in the ICC World Cup Qualifiers and completed the campaigns for Netherlands, Nepal, Papua New Guinea and Hong Kong in the tournament.
The 07th/08th play-off between Netherlands and Nepal, contested as a List-A match and the 9th/10th play-off, which was coincidentally the sport’s 4000th official ODI in the Men’s category, contested between Papua New Guinea and Hong Kong. It was also the final time both the sides played a confirmed ODI status match until the next World Cup Qualifiers, as both finished as the bottom placed Associates in the World Cup Qualifiers and hence, relegated to play ICC WCL Division 2, sometime in 2019 for spots in ICC WCL Championship.
By contrast, both Nepal and Netherlands, who will have the coveted ODI status after 25th Mar 2018, played their match under List-A status and Nepal came up short in not much surprising manner, as they have shown quite often after playing a match, which had more significance to their future. Quite often do they come up shorts right after winning a monumental game for the development of the sport in their country.
Netherlands have had a pretty disappointing tournament. As a team, who literally had the license to go after confirmed with ODI status and #13 spot in the 2020-2022 ICC ODI League, the performances were a big letdown as many had speculated that they would be one of the dark horses to challenge for the top 2 spots to qualify for ICC Cricket World Cup in 2019.
Papua New Guinea have held their heads high for the 4 years in which they had the ODI status. They played their best brand of cricket at the start of the WCL Championship and were even heading the points table at halfway mark at one point of time. However, it has been a major downside since then for the team from the Asia Pacific region and now will be hoping to do good in the T20 format to try and qualify for the ICC World T20 and keep the T20I status for the next few years.
Things went horribly wrong for Hong Kong in their batting department. Their bowlers did brilliantly well and being one of the Associate members to beat a Full member (Afghanistan) in the tournament, it showed that the potential is very much there and were left all to blame for themselves as the batting unit failed as a collective unit to not only lose out on Super Sixes, but also lose the ODI status for the next 4 years. A sad end after impressive 3rd place finishes in both ICC WCL Championship and ICC Intercontinental Cup.
While the whole of Nepal is just content with the ODI status celebration as of now, the real hard work begins post the conclusion of the World Cup Qualifiers. Scotland, Hong Kong, Papua New Guinea and UAE found it out first-hand as to how tough it is to secure matches against Full members in the 4 years of time they had with their ODI status and while Nepali fans will say that their team’s popularity will get them more matches, we fear they will be in for a rude shock very soon as to how tough it is to get matches to play as an Associate member.
Hong Kong and PNG did not get a single game against a Full member in 4 years of status. That’s the ground zero truth and if nothing changes, the situation will remain the same for the next 4 years as well for Scotland, UAE and Nepal.
