Earlier today, International Cricket Council (ICC) have announced that all matches in the upcoming Asian Cricket Council (ACC) 2018 Asia Cup, set to take place in Abu Dhabi and Dubai from 15th – 28th Sep, 2018 will carry official ODI status.
The decision was a major step in ensuring that Hong Kong, who qualified from the Asia Cup qualifiers held in Malaysia from Aug 29th – Sep 06th, 2018, will be able to play full official ODI status matches in the Asia Cup 2018, starting with their group phase matches against India and Pakistan (even if they progress beyond the group phase into the Super 4 stage and final of the tournament). Hong Kong had earlier lost their ODI status until FY2022 after a disappointing campaign in the ICC World Cup Qualifiers held in Mar 2018 in Zimbabwe, where they failed to finish amongst the top 3 Associate countries among the 5 countries participating in the event (excluding Netherlands, who were already assured their ODI status following their winning the 2015-2017 WCL Championships).
The ICC press release had very interesting points put across by CEO, David Richardson with regards to awarding ODI status to multi-team tournaments featuring few countries with ODI status and others without them.
Going by that logic, it would seem logical that even the matches in the World Cricket League Championships (Where Scotland, United Arab Emirates and Nepal would be the countries with ODI status) should get considered under the same viewpoints if it is held in a 6-team or 8-team format. The previous edition had the matches between ODI accredited countries played with the official status while matches involving a country without ODI status were classified as List-A.
The press release also mentioned that a review of awarding of ODI status following on the lines of awarding T20I status to all member countries is in process and the next few months should bring upon a set decision by ICC.
The Asia Cup decision is in line with what has been followed in the earlier and historical editions of the tournament having uniform ODI status for all matches being played between Full members and non-Full members. More multi-team tournaments having the same uniformity with regards to official match status would be welcomed by one and all across the Associate member landscape.
