The last time a Cricket player chose the World Cup winning presentation platform to say how their own cricket board behaves with its players, the player never went onto represent the country again. Yes, we are talking about Darren Sammy’s outburst against Cricket West Indies after winning the ICC WorldT20 in Kolkata, India in 2016.
This time, amid much protest and surprise over the shrinkage of teams for 2019 ICC Cricket World Cup, the World Cup Qualifiers Man-of-the-Series, Zimbabwe’s Sikandar Raza chose the same platform to speak about his emotions and opinions for the growth of the game in Zimbabwe and Associate countries and against the 10-team World Cup format for 50-overs. All this, while ICC chief Dave Richardson, stood very close-by and heard it all along with the global audiences on TV and Internet.
Perhaps it was mistake of the presenter, Pommie Mbangwa, whose question regarding how Raza’s feelings were after getting the trophy, which sparked off his agenda to address in front of Global Media. When your country and hopes of millions of supporters are crushed by not making it in the World Cup, no consolation prize can make up for that and these are kind of moments ICC needs to take notice of, as their decision has not only limited Associate countries participation in the World Cup, but also two of their full members, Zimbabwe and Ireland. Not the right notion of your full members are also missing out in the World Cup. There’s no point having full membership, if it does not even guarantee a World Cup spot by itself. Rather be in the Associate ranks then.
“This trophy will serve as a reminder of the hard work that Peter Borren and his Dutch players, Kyle Coetzer and his Scottish players, Rohan Mustafa and his UAE players, and all the other countries that came and couldn’t make it to the World Cup,” Raza said. He congratulated Nepal on their ODI status but at the same time, criticized ICC’s decision to keep the number of ODI status countries to 16, which meant that the bottom 2 Associates, Papua New Guinea and Hong Kong , lost their status for the next four years.
“Congratulations to Nepal and to have their ODI status for the first time but this trophy will also serve as a painful reminder that two of our brother countries lost their ODI status as well and I wish them the very best of luck. Not much to say to be honest, Pommie, just a whole lot of emotions. Just a painful reminder to be honest.” Raza concluded in his interview.
This came a few days after Ireland’s skipper William Porterfield’s reaction after their loss to Afghanistan in the final Super Sixes match, which ended their hopes to participate in the 2019 World Cup in the post-match interview, where he spoke about the future of the Associates and criticized the World Cup format and ICC’s inclination to have big match broadcasting deals in place to guarantee 9 games each to the top teams in the tournament for garnering more revenue opportunities.
A change.org petition is also currently doing the rounds with people putting in their signatures for ICC to change their decision regarding the number of teams in the Cricket World Cup and Sikandar Raza’s words might just fuel the spark that is required from the players and officials perspective to stand against the format and pressurize ICC to change their decision.
Raza’s emotional outburst has been praised by the cricketing fraternity and their disappointment on the World Cup format and the notion of growing the game in the Associate countries. Former Scotland captain, Preston Mommsen, also highlighted some of the ICC values that they stick to and how the current decisions contradict the points.
Scotland, who made all the right impressions only to lose out in the end due to weather intervention, will lose out on much required funding and matches for not being able to advance from the Qualifiers, and their head coach Grant Bradburn also echoed his views as to how ICC should support the growth of the game in Associate countries and provide more opportunities to them in terms of participation in World Cups.
For some of the players in the Associate countries, this could very well be their final participation in an ICC event for World Cup Qualifiers, and with the next World Cup due in 2023, the World might never get to see them again playing a World Cup match against a full member or fellow Associates.
With the ICC’s point of reducing the number of teams to ensure lesser dead-rubber games and one-sided contests in the World Cup being a major talking point, it’s best to ensure that Associate (ODI status and non-status) countries get enough games against full members before the next World Cup Qualifiers comes along to give them better opportunity to win against much fancied opponents.
And it should be a mandate for World Cup Qualifiers to have DRS & reserve days in place, so a game of cricket (for some, it’s all about their livelihood’s) is not decided by factors not in the players hands. Hopefully, all Cricket players and officials from full members and Associate countries will come together to raise the concern and ensure that the point is definitely spoken about at lengths in the upcoming ICC meetings (including their Annual General Meeting in Jun 2018).
