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South Africa has always looked out for Zimbabwe during the bad times... not only bilateral tours, but also with A team tours and letting the national team participate in domestic competitions. I thought that one-off Supersport Challenge series was a nice gesture too.

Since Zimbabwe has resumed ties with New Zealand, I think NZ's friendship has been quite important too. That they've been the only overseas tour in 2 years speaks volumes... considering everyone else "indefinitely postpones". And also, they gave Jarvis and Taylor a chance in their domestic competitions.

Bangladesh? I think it's more of a mutual "we'll look out for each other by arranging a series with each other when we can" type arrangement.

West Indies, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, England, India - done nothing. Maybe some help at the ICC table here and there but I think that's more for their benefit than Zimbabwe's... Maybe Australia help out behind the scenes a bit, sometimes you hear about players and coaching going to Australia for a few weeks of training which is better than nothing but an ODI series would be more useful to Zimbabwe's development right now.

Zimbabwe really should cash in on all of these "postponed" tours, especially by the subcontinental teams where Zimbabwe would most likely struggle most against their exotic spin bowlers; if they are in the FTP then aren't teams obligated to play them?

There needs to be some penalty for not playing, although due to our money pressures, our administrators seem relieved to "postpone" at times.

Jemisi wrote:There needs to be some penalty for not playing, although due to our money pressures, our administrators seem relieved to "postpone" at times.

There is - FTP is governed by a contract that the ICC Full Members all sign up to, and it's a six-figure fine on the sides that pull out of a tour. I don't have a copy to hand, but it's on the ICC website somewhere. They probably don't kick in where tours are 'indefinitely postponed' by 'mutual consent', though...

I would hazard a guess that, given how short ZC are on money, pulling in some of those fines might be more useful to them than getting the tours...

Frankly, I feel all should live up to their promises, simple as that, no hiding behind politics, congestion, etc.

Having said that, congestion can be eased by having a two or even three tier system.

Tier one: Proteas, Aus, Eng, India, Pakistan, SL
Tier two: WI, NZ,Bang, Zim, Ireland
(Tier three: Scotland, Holland, Afganistan, Kenya)

Bind each team in the tiers to play each other twice (home and away) every 3 years, then draw up a table, lowest of tier one plays highest of tier two, home and away over two/three months, to determine promotion/relegation. Similar arrangement for tier 3.

Frankly I think Zim playing any of the top Tier is a futile exercise, maybe playing their A teams may be beneficial. This way we will have meaningful competition against similar talent, and incentive to fulfill fixtures as promotion and demotion is on the line. Only down side, would be who will want to buy TV rights to tier 2 and 3 (flip side is more incentive to get out of that tier).

Obviously we would need to see how this affects ODI and T20 though.

The only way the 2nd Div concept can work is if the money from all levels gets pooled somehow, similar to a football rights deal. The top tier would have to cough up the rights deal cash to enable the second tier to function. But the game demands historical contests, Ashes not happening because Aus or Eng got relegated would be a problem. It would be great for us and BD and Ire, but crap for WI and NZ. Although on NZ's current efforts it is probably fair.

Tiers make zero sense. Sorry.

I can think of no other international sport where you have tiers. Tiers are only used as far as I know in domestic sports to facilitate huge numbers of teams (sometimes hundreds) and they can work because you have freedom of movement in a domestic set up. If FlowerPower, Jemisi and I were playing for say...Brentford F.C. in the FA's League One we would not be restricted to League One for as long as Brentford remain there as we could freely play for Manchester City or Chelsea if either of those teams were interested in us. In a tier system for international cricket this would not be the case because of the qualification rules which require citizenship...which you can't get without fulfilling a country's naturalization requirements. So whereas Jemisi could move between Brentford and say Chelsea within a season if he was on form, FlowerPower could never do the same in international cricket unless he was blessed with multiple citizenship from the outset, otherwise he would have to wait between 3 to 5 years to do so. And given that most cricketers have a 20 year playing life (age 20-40) it would be ridiculous to expect players to wait out up to a quarter of their playing life just to qualify to play in another tier.


Tiers are an attractive solution because them seem to work in domestic sport (and they do work in domestic sport), but the reason they work in domestic sport is because domestic sport is very, very different from international sport. Rather than tiers a really simple and effective solution is to simply lengthen the FTP from the current 9 year period to maybe 14-15 years. Really it just makes sense. Keeping the time period of the FTP the same while increasing membership is obviously going to lead to congestion. The solution then is to lengthen the period of the FTP with increasing membership. They could also cut out some of the ODIs being played.

And ultimately they also need to lengthen the FTP to reintroduce the practice of having frequent tour matches. Tour matches are what will help struggling teams to improve, not putting them into a tier system where they rarely get to play better opposition. Bangladesh has been unfortunate in that they got full member status at a time when tour matches were being drastically reduced. At one time there used to be as many tour matches or sometimes even more tour matches than there were official international matches. Those tour matches are what helped visiting teams to acclimatize (which is extremely important if a team wants to do well on a tour) and allowed them to test out their various players before the official matches and get match practice against potentially better opposition without the pressure of it being an international fixture.

I have very little doubt that if the next time Bangladesh were to tour India and were scheduled to play a 2-day match against Aruna Cricket Club (a 1st division club in Tamil Nadu) and 4-day first-class matches Jharkhand (a Ranji trophy plate league team), Bengal (a Ranji trophy super league team) and Central Zone (a Duleep trophy team) before the first test against India (of a 3 match series) then one would see Bangladesh doing much better than they have in the past.

Introducing more competitions like the Nissar Trophy (contested between the winners of India's and Pakistan's first class competitions) and the M. J. Gopalan Trophy (contested between Madras and Ceylon and later Tamil Nadu and Sri Lanka) would go a long way to helping. One could easily envision a competition named after a pre-partition (1971 partition) Pakistani player (just as how the Nissar trophy is named after a pre-partition (1948 partition) India player) involving the winner of Pakistan's and Bangladesh's first class competitions and a competition named after a pre-1948 Bengali player involving say Bengal, Bangladesh or Bangladesh A and Bangladesh's top first-class team of the season (maybe it could be the Bose-Goswami Trophy after Bapi Bose and Chuni Goswami).

brmtaylor.com admin wrote:South Africa has always looked out for Zimbabwe during the bad times... not only bilateral tours, but also with A team tours and letting the national team participate in domestic competitions. I thought that one-off Supersport Challenge series was a nice gesture too.
....snip

I would organize it on a scale like this:

Bona fide friend: South Africa

Good friend: New Zealand

Friend: Bangladesh

Neither friend nor foe: West Indies, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, India

"It's complicated": Australia

Foe: England

I think that is well said JHunter

brmtaylor.com admin wrote:I think that is well said JHunter

Thank you brmtaylor.

I always wondered why so many people liked the idea of tiers for international cricket when it has so many inherent drawbacks:

- no freedom of movement between teams means some of the best players such as Chanderpaul, Sangakkara and Jaywardene (all from teams that would theoretically end up in a second tier competition) would almost never face top opposition

- the difference in Test, ODI and T20 rankings means that for Tests you would see: South Africa, England, Australia, Pakistan and India (with Pakistan and India facing relegation at the end of "the season") in division 1 and Sri Lanka, West Indies, New Zealand, Bangladesh and Zimbabwe in division 2; but for ODIs one would see: England, South Africa, Australia, India and Sri Lanka in division 1 and Pakistan, West Indies, New Zealand, Bangladesh and Zimbabwe in division 2; and for T20Is one would see: Sri Lanka, West Indies, India, England and South Africa in division 1 and Pakistan, Australia, New Zealand, Bangladesh and Zimbabwe in division 2. There is literally no way to make that work logistically as it would entail a full series of tests, ODIs and T20s only between England, India South Africa in division 1 and between New Zealand, Bangladesh and Zimbabwe in division 2. For the rest according to the rankings you would have Australia playing tests and ODIs against England but NOT playing T20Is (which is crazy...if Australia are already in England why waste the money of sending them home without play T20Is and also skip out on the oodles of cash to be made from Australia v England in T20?) and you would have West Indies in England for T20s but not for Tests or ODIs (which again is a massive waste of money since West Indies are already in England so they may as well play some tests and ODIs rather than playing say 5 T20s this year, another 3 T20s in the year after next and then maybe playing one test and one ODI in that same year).

The FTP is already so long that most people are already unaware of it as "a season" of home-and-away anyway. So lengthening it will make no difference. All they need to do is to make sure that Test and ODI series that have been named such as The Ashes (Aus v Eng), Frank Worrell Trophy (Aus v WI), Wisden Trophy (Eng v WI), Trans Tasman Trophy (Aus v NZ), Border–Gavaskar Trophy (Aus v Ind), Basil D'Oliveira Trophy (Eng v SA), Southern Cross Trophy (Aus v Zim), Sir Vivian Richards Trophy (SA v WI), Warne–Muralidaran Trophy (Aus v SL), Pataudi Trophy (Eng v Ind in England), Anthony de Mello Trophy ( Ind v Eng in India) and Chappell–Hadlee Trophy (Aus v NZ ODI) as well as iconic series such as India v Pakistan get to be played a bit more regularly and as time goes by you lengthen the FTP period as teams such as Bangladesh and Zimbabwe get better and command more respect and draw demand for more tests and as new teams get included (such as Afghanistan, Kenya/East Africa and maybe Ireland if they get serious about domestic multi-innings cricket).

As for the friends list, from my perspective as a non-Zimbabwean I've noticed that West Indies, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and India seem to be neither here nor there with regards to Zimbabwe except to defend Zimbabwe in the ICC from any designs by England and Australia ("it's complicated") to punish Zimbabwe somehow...note how the headquarters of the ICC moved to Dubai in 2005 for mainly commercial reasons (to get the administrative staff from London and commercial staff from Monaco together) but also to ensure Zimbabwe wasn't disadvantaged by the UK's stance against the country with regards to visas and if I remember rightly these 4 boards have always been supportive of Zimbabwe maintaining full member status in spite of England's machinations to achieve either a suspension or full demotion due to politics and have been supportive of Zimbabwe's return to playing test matches after 2007/08 (http://www.wowdelhi.com/citylife/CityNe ... newsid=744, http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2008/ju ... ricketteam, http://www.cricketweb.net/forum/cricket ... ad-11.html, http://jamaica-star.com/thestar/2007120 ... orts8.html). Despite what the British government and the ECB seemed to have thought I never did agree with the idea that to help Zimbabwe during the Time of Troubles one should punish Zimbabwe. Sure one should protest against any wrong-doings (by anyone; not just those you don't like) going on in the country and if there was hanky panky in Zimbabwe Cricket with regards to the finances and administration then perhaps suspend any transfer of ICC funds to Zimbabwe Cricket pending an audit, but banning players, trying to get Zimbabwe expelled from an international tournament and demoting an entire cricketing fraternity's full member status? Ridiculous...and dangerous. It would set a precedent for groups to form among boards in the ICC to gang up on one particular board. How the ECB didn't realize this I do not know, but they are lucky it hasn't come back to haunt them in a substantial way yet (they did get a taste of their own medicine when Australia, South Africa and India set up the Champions League T20 and England's needs weren't considered).

EDIT: Doing a little more digging the best name for a competition between the winner of Pakistan's and Bangladesh's first class competitions would probably be the Niaz Ahmed Trophy after the player who was born in India, played for East Pakistan/Dacca domestically and played test cricket for Pakistan and died in Pakistan.

Maybe a similar competition between South Africa and Zimbabwe's first class champions (to encourage the re-development of cricket in Zimbabwe) could be called the Johnson-Traicos Trophy? Or if that is too delicate given the circumstances surrounding those players maybe the Crisp-Tomlinson Trophy?

Those are some good points, I hadn't even really considered the logistical nightmare of tiers for ODIs and T20s, I'd always just been thinking about it for Tests.