Bangladesh Watch 2015-2019

For discussion of any non-Zimbabwean cricket.
Kriterion_BD
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Re: Bangladesh Watch 2015-2019

Post by Kriterion_BD »

JHunter, you can't deny though that Bangladesh were given Test status way to early in the sense that we didn't have the quality for it. I most likely wouldn't have admitted that 10 years ago...at the very least I would skirt around that fact.

As a BD fan, I'm totally for us getting freebie test status, but we didn't deserve it based on merit. We had a fledgling, at best ad hoc, multi day cricket competition immediately before Test status. It was not even first class. Yes, we may have had multi-day cricket in the 50s, 60s, 70s due to our past as political entities within India and Pakistan, but they were not of the standard to either manufacture or maintain Test quality players. We competed on an even keel with Fiji as recently as the 1980s, for god's sake!

By the same token, Ireland deserves Test status regardless of whether they have FC competitions or not - the have just started the Interpros 3-day league recently. Its because Ireland have proven their quality over a number of years. They deserve it more than BD did.

Shakib and Tamim were our first truly Test quality players (Mushfiq debuted earlier, but he didn't become a Test quality player until well after those 2) and we had to wait 10 years before they could be called as such.

Although we didn't deserve it, granting us Test status prematurely was the right decision by the ICC because without it, we'd have been ranked below Nepal and Uganda by now. At best we would have been at the level of a UAE or Scotland. The extra money and exposure that Test cricket brought us cannot be overstated. We have the third largest population amongst all cricketing nations, and that is our biggest asset.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JjtuZBykSzM (Noreaga - Blood Money Part 3)

JHunter
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Re: Bangladesh Watch 2015-2019

Post by JHunter »

Kriterion_BD wrote:JHunter, you can't deny though that Bangladesh were given Test status way to early in the sense that we didn't have the quality for it. I most likely wouldn't have admitted that 10 years ago...at the very least I would skirt around that fact.
Given that I've never thought the "quality" argument was one that held much merit given how poorly South Africa performed when it was first accorded test status and New Zealand took over two decades to register their first test win, then no I can't deny such a fact but similar I think such facts are entirely besides the point.

Quality is an attribute which can vary based on a lot of factors some of which are actually beyond the control of the earthly powers of cricketers and cricket administrators. If you have a super-talented bunch of players who all suddenly retire then quite suddenly the quality of a national team dips precipitously (see Australia, the West Indies and Zimbabwe as examples since the 1960s). If a lot of the guys playing cricket aren't talented but do work hard then the quality of the cricket may improve but it may not reach a particular (and at times subjective) standard of quality.

The danger in promoting the concept that teams have to be a certain quality (rather than nations have certain foundations based on more or less objective criteria) before they attain a certain membership is that this naturally leads to the idea that teams who no longer have this quality this very instant (but still have the foundations necessary to eventually improve their quality) should then have this membership taken away from them. It would be akin to saying that just because England are crap in FIFA World Cups except in 1966 and 1990 that they should no longer be eligible to play football at the highest level and be relegated to being a member of UEFA but not of FIFA (rather like how Kiribati and Niue are associate members of the OFC but NOT members of FIFA). Clearly such thoughts would not be entertained in football because England clearly has the foundations to produce good quality footballers at some point. Yet in cricket such thoughts are entertained and encouraged even unwittingly by those who would think otherwise once they succumb to the idea that "quality" must be a determinant in whether a national team gets to play another national team (note in most international sports, international competition is based on the concept that all international teams are equal once they adhere to membership criteria within an international sports organization).
As a BD fan, I'm totally for us getting freebie test status, but we didn't deserve it based on merit.
Pity you feel that way.
We had a fledgling, at best ad hoc, multi day cricket competition immediately before Test status.
From what I could tell there were multi day matches going back to at least 1997 if I'm not mistaken. That's 3 years before test status. Fledgling yes. Ad hoc would seem to be a rather unkind description since it seems to have been structured (even if it may not have been organized properly)
It was not even first class.
As I explained in other threads it would not have been first class because in the late 1940s or early 1950s (I think it was 1947) only the ICC or full members could adjudge a competition as first class. Bangladesh as a non-full member could not have a first class competition unless the ICC adjudged it so after Bangladesh asked.
Yes, we may have had multi-day cricket in the 50s, 60s, 70s due to our past as political entities within India and Pakistan, but they were not of the standard to either manufacture or maintain Test quality players.


That might be your opinion, but despite the cultural and social discrimination in Pakistan there were two players who hailed from East Pakistan (one being born there, the other having moved there at a young age after the 1947 Partition with his family) who played for full strength Pakistani sides in tests and unofficial tests: Niaz Ahmed Siddiqi and Raqibul Hassan. So the multi-day cricket there did manufacture test quality players of the time. The standard of the multi-day cricket in the 30s, 50s and 60s were in line with the standards of the wider country at the time. So the standards of 1930s Bengal would have been in line with that of India as a whole in the mid 1930s and that of East Pakistan would have been in line with that of Pakistan where the competitions were mostly amateur based in the 50s and 60s. Those standards may not have been enough to produce test players today, but they did produce test players in the 50s and 60s which is what matters.
We competed on an even keel with Fiji as recently as the 1980s, for god's sake!
And that's not surprising:

1. Fiji is a country in which native Fijians were reportedly a minority in the 1970s with Indo-Fijians constituting at least half of the population. In essence it would have had a very similar population structure to the UAE today with a very large population of fairly recent migrants (Indian migrants started arriving in 1879, so by 1977 it was possible for people to be alive in Fiji who would have been alive at the time before the Indians arrived) from a country with a cricketing culture. Fiji was admitted into the ICC in 1965.

2. Bangladesh suffered badly from the liberation war. And according to this book on page 210, cricket apparently faced significant domestic opposition in the aftermath of the war (no surprises there since right after the war cricket would probably be caught up in the anti-Pakistani sentiment and the general bad relations between Bangladesh and Pakistan from 1971 to 1974/1975 that even resulted in Pakistan leaving the Commonwealth in 1972) which made it slow to reorganize. Competition from football didn't help either.

Yet, a country which had domestic cricket in a literal mess between 1971 and 1975 having suffered a bad civil war/liberation, established a national board in 1972, draft a new constitution for the board in 1976 and as you said by the 1980s was competing on an even keel with a plurality Indian populated country which had been admitted to the ICC in 1965 and which had not suffered any civil conflict and faced domestic opposition to cricket quite possibly as the sport of the former oppressor....

Note however that despite having a population derived from a country with a cricketing culture, the Fijian cricketing scene has not put in place the foundations like Bangladesh did or like Afghanistan and Ireland have been doing recently. That's why it is Bangladesh currently beating Pakistan 2-0 and not Fiji.
By the same token, Ireland deserves Test status regardless of whether they have FC competitions or not
Nope.

I would say Ireland deserve test status regardless of whether they would win their first test match or not or if it would take them 20 years to win their first test match.

I would never say Ireland deserve test status regardless of if they have a multi-day competition or not. Not having it would likely mean Ireland would be pursuing the leech model of being a full member where they would essentially get the ECB to bank roll the development of an Irish test team but get zero returns on this in the form of gate receipts or tv rights.
- the have just started the Interpros 3-day league recently.


Now that they have, I do think Ireland deserve it along with Afghanistan. They are taking the steps to build the foundation.
Its because Ireland have proven their quality over a number of years. They deserve it more than BD did.
You see now we get back to what I was referring to earlier. Now we are talking about a country "deserving" it more than some other country did based on quality (which is more or less a relative criteria and somewhat subjective) and not on what grassroots foundations are in place. And this after you rightly derided the "idiot Indians and Pakistanis" back on the first page who "claim Afghanistan and Ireland are better than [BD] or developing faster".....

If we maintained that attitude from 1999 to 2006 then Kenya would have been given full membership without a domestic competition based on the quality of the current crop of cricketers at the time. As we have seen, Kenya fell away..badly. And had no foundations to rebuild the team. The end result? Nobody seriously thinks Kenya "deserves" full membership anymore. If Ireland had followed the Kenya route of trying to push for full membership without a domestic competition and based primarily on ODI results, on what basis would they find new talent if something happened to cause most of the 2007-2015 players to leave the scene? England's county championship? If so, then why not have the Irish team merge with the England team as a Great Britain and Ireland team? Or why not have Bangladesh parasitize on India or Pakistan's first class competition to provide all of their national players?


Although we didn't deserve it, granting us Test status prematurely was the right decision by the ICC because without it, we'd have been ranked below Nepal and Uganda by now.
I would be willing to bet a house that without test status Bangladesh would not be ranked below Uganda right now. That's taking a very extreme position.
At best we would have been at the level of a UAE or Scotland.


I think you aren't giving BD enough credit here. ;) Based on what Bangladesh did it would probably have been similar to Afghanistan now had it not been granted test status. The May 1999 win over Pakistan (which happened before test status in 2000) would likely have been similar to Ireland's 2007 World Cup or Afghanistan's qualification for the the 2015 World Cup or its attainment of ODI status in 2011.
The extra money and exposure that Test cricket brought us cannot be overstated.
Indeed and I agree. That's why I always support when countries invest in putting in place the foundations to support test status (and not to be parasitic).
We have the third largest population amongst all cricketing nations, and that is our biggest asset.
Indeed. And with twenty20 cricket having been created in 2003 (only 4 years after the 1999 win over Pakistan) I have little doubt that without test status that cricket in Bangladesh would have been continued to grow in popularity due to the twenty20 phenomenon.

Kriterion_BD
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Re: Bangladesh Watch 2015-2019

Post by Kriterion_BD »

The danger in promoting the concept that teams have to be a certain quality (rather than nations have certain foundations based on more or less objective criteria) before they attain a certain membership is that this naturally leads to the idea that teams who no longer have this quality this very instant (but still have the foundations necessary to eventually improve their quality) should then have this membership taken away from them. It would be akin to saying that just because England are crap in FIFA World Cups except in 1966 and 1990 that they should no longer be eligible to play football at the highest level and be relegated to being a member of UEFA but not of FIFA (rather like how Kiribati and Niue are associate members of the OFC but NOT members of FIFA). Clearly such thoughts would not be entertained in football because England clearly has the foundations to produce good quality footballers at some point. Yet in cricket such thoughts are entertained and encouraged even unwittingly by those who would think otherwise once they succumb to the idea that "quality" must be a determinant in whether a national team gets to play another national team (note in most international sports, international competition is based on the concept that all international teams are equal once they adhere to membership criteria within an international sports organization).
Interesting point, but I'm not so sure its correct. For example, the US gov with their massive resources (not USACA), if they so wanted could easily develop the infrustructure for Test cricket within a fortnight. Massive 100,000 seat stadiums, training grounds, gyms, hire solid coaches from around the world, create a 20 team league in cities all over the US, and have a solid 4-day cricket league. However, they simply shouldn't play Test cricket if they can't even compete with the likes of Uganda or Kenya.

Test cricket itself means its supposed to be the ultimate test of a nation's cricketing skill, knowledge, ability, and stamina. Expanding to 100+ Test nations is ridiculous just because they have the infrastructure, just like letting me play professional tennis just because I have a racket is nonsensical.

What the ICC needs to do is lay out a CLEAR criteria for Test status, which they haven't. Now they have a Test Challenge but the details are still under wraps. It may even be one of those things the ICC decides to scrap like the Test playoffs.
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Kriterion_BD
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Re: Bangladesh Watch 2015-2019

Post by Kriterion_BD »

That might be your opinion, but despite the cultural and social discrimination in Pakistan there were two players who hailed from East Pakistan (one being born there, the other having moved there at a young age after the 1947 Partition with his family) who played for full strength Pakistani sides in tests and unofficial tests: Niaz Ahmed Siddiqi and Raqibul Hassan. So the multi-day cricket there did manufacture test quality players of the time. The standard of the multi-day cricket in the 30s, 50s and 60s were in line with the standards of the wider country at the time. So the standards of 1930s Bengal would have been in line with that of India as a whole in the mid 1930s and that of East Pakistan would have been in line with that of Pakistan where the competitions were mostly amateur based in the 50s and 60s. Those standards may not have been enough to produce test players today, but they did produce test players in the 50s and 60s which is what matters.
I'm aware of Hasan, but never heard of Siddiqui. But still, just having two players of Test quality cannot warrant Test status. You either need at least 5-6 players of genuine quality or a team that synergisitically plays above its ability. East Pakistan/Bangladesh had neither until 2013.

A team should at least be able to draw matches at home against a full strength "established" side to say they are "good enough" for Test cricket.

Also when SA played their first Tests, I don't think the cricket authorities were even aware of Test cricket's existence. SA just played cricket, and it was later on retroactively awarded Test status.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JjtuZBykSzM (Noreaga - Blood Money Part 3)

JHunter
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Re: Bangladesh Watch 2015-2019

Post by JHunter »

Kriterion_BD wrote:
The danger in promoting the concept that teams have to be a certain quality (rather than nations have certain foundations based on more or less objective criteria) before they attain a certain membership is that this naturally leads to the idea that teams who no longer have this quality this very instant (but still have the foundations necessary to eventually improve their quality) should then have this membership taken away from them. It would be akin to saying that just because England are crap in FIFA World Cups except in 1966 and 1990 that they should no longer be eligible to play football at the highest level and be relegated to being a member of UEFA but not of FIFA (rather like how Kiribati and Niue are associate members of the OFC but NOT members of FIFA). Clearly such thoughts would not be entertained in football because England clearly has the foundations to produce good quality footballers at some point. Yet in cricket such thoughts are entertained and encouraged even unwittingly by those who would think otherwise once they succumb to the idea that "quality" must be a determinant in whether a national team gets to play another national team (note in most international sports, international competition is based on the concept that all international teams are equal once they adhere to membership criteria within an international sports organization).
Interesting point, but I'm not so sure its correct. For example, the US gov with their massive resources (not USACA), if they so wanted could easily develop the infrustructure for Test cricket within a fortnight. Massive 100,000 seat stadiums, training grounds, gyms, hire solid coaches from around the world, create a 20 team league in cities all over the US, and have a solid 4-day cricket league. However, they simply shouldn't play Test cricket if they can't even compete with the likes of Uganda or Kenya.
Okay, I think I see where there might be apparent confusion. When I said that nations should be promoted to test cricket based on having infrastructure in place I was referring to nations as a collective group of people (societies) within territorial defined areas. I was not referring to states (which by definition usually means their governments). I don't think governments should invest massive resources in sports infrastructure unless the majority of the nation (the population) are clearly for it. At best there should be public-private partnerships in sports infrastructure. So if there is a desire for a stadium for example but not enough cash for it, then IF the government has enough cash they could step in and contribute, but the government should earn back some of that cash for use in areas like health and education..OR the government should have that stadium available whenever it is needed to support sports education for schools. Those are the kinds of things I can agree with. Not for governments to provide infrastructure at a massive cost to themselves and the taxpayers in order for private companies to then make a load of cash off of that infrastructure by actually charging the public whose taxes built that infrastructure in the first place.

Now I say "nations" because traditionally in cricket it has been nations which have been promoted to test status or been accepted into the ICC as affiliates or associates:

- South Africa was promoted (even if retroactively) as a nation (1889) before it became an actual state (in 1910) and even before all of the areas came under final British control (in 1902 with the Boer War) with Transvaal having traditionally participated in the Currie Cup before then while curiously not being British.

- Australia was one of the first (retroactively just like England )test nations (1877) decades before it was a unified state (1901). And Australia and South Africa were two of the founding members of the ICC alomgside England in 1909 (1 year before South Africa unified as a state).

- West Indies was the fourth test nation (1928) again decades before it became a (mostly) unified state (1958) after which the state collapsed but the nation continued.

- Ireland was admitted as a nation in 1993 but has not been a unified state except under British control from the 1800s into the 1920s and perhaps for two days in December 1922 when Northern Ireland was a part of the Irish Free State.

- Scotland was admitted as a nation in 1994 despite not having an separate state to go with it since 1707.

And in the traditional nations, cricket is popular enough that the government does not need to invest in "massive 100,000 seat stadiums, training grounds, gyms, hire solid coaches from around the world, create a 20 team league in cities all over the US, and have a solid 4-day cricket league" because people in those societies generally like cricket enough to want to organize those things without the government having to take the lead (even if historically the governments did). The fact that the USACA would need the US government to do those things is proof enough that there is no real cricketing culture (outside of South Asian, West Indian, Australasian, southern African and English migrants) in the US to build the foundations for test cricket or to support a 4-day league. In the 10 full members players either find the time or can be paid to be professional in order to play in the 4-day or 3-day first class leagues. But crucially below those first class competitions you have multi-day cricket at the club level that feeds into the first-class level and here the standard is amateur or semi-professional often times. I can readily think of grade cricket in Australia and various 2-day and 3-day club competitions in the West Indies and minor counties cricket in England where you have many more players willingly playing multi-innings cricket.

Until Ireland brought in the Inter-Provs, it seems very few players there were clamouring for any kind of multi-day cricket at any level. Not even a freaking two-day match.

By contrast when Bangladesh was gearing up to qualify for the 1996 World Cup, the BCCB was busy encouraging overseas players to come and play club cricket in Bangladesh and "also [realised] that the preoccupation with the one-day variety can take Bangladesh nowhere near Test recognition. So it [...] stitched up an agreement with Pepsi Cola International to set up a national cricket championship along the lines of India's Ranji Trophy" as noted in this story from February 1994.

So even here we have a news story acknowledging that the BCCB recognized from as far back as 1994 that it needed to re-introduce multi-day cricket (the final of the 1975 National Cricket Championship was definitely a three-day match) in what is now Bangladesh in order to become a test nation. And this is a board made up ultimately of administrators derived ultimately from clubs throughout the country.

Did the BCCB get to institute a Bangladeshi version of the Ranji trophy thanks to Pepsi? Well...sorta.. The intent was there as can be seen by the fact thatthe first edition of the Pepsi National Cricket Championship featured semi-final and final matches which lasted for two day (single innings, each innings lasting 60 overs for the semi-finals and 80 overs for the final). In 1995 the format changed to 45-over matches right through to the final (possibly I suspect in preparation for the 1996 World Cup) but in the fourth edition of the tournament the final was a 3-day multi-innings match which Chittagong won by an innings and 64 runs. So even if as it seems the preliminary matches of the Pepsi sponsored versions of the National Cricket Champions were 40-50 over affairs there definitely seemed to be an intent that the final matches between the best 4 teams should be contested over the course of at least two days and that each team should bat for more than 50 overs each. While not ideal, at the very least this would have been useful for getting the best teams to practice batting for longer (essential in first-class cricket) and at least in 1997 the best two teams got experience in playing multi-innings cricket over multiple days.

Years ago over at the Bangla forum I asked about when multi innings, multi-day cricket was first really reintroduced in a structured way. Unfortunately the posters could not remember exactly when but one of them did recall that in the 1990s 2-day 90 over matches were introduced. Since the National Cricket League consisted of 3-day matches with each team being allowed to bat for more than 90 overs, then this 2-day 90 over competition must clearly have been introduced before then. So it is quite likely that it was introduced in the 1996/1997 edition of the Pepsi National Cricket Championship given the format of the final match.

Unlike the nations with actual cricketing cultures, the US would find it difficult to actually support a 4-day league contested by anything more than a few teams. The reason being that employers are unlikely to be okay with giving players time off every season to play cricket for 2 days every match (on the 2 match days which aren't weekends). Here in the West Indies though for example Sheldon Cotterell is actually a soldier by profession but the military itself participates in cricket competitions. So when your organization is involved fully in a sport, it wouldn't be that difficult to be able to play in a four-day match provided your work wasn't otherwise affected. Try to imagine Sheldon playing 4 day cricket while being a member of a state national guard or state militia in the US, never mind any of the federal military forces. Those organizations don't play cricket and are not interested in doing so and would not be very accommodating to personnel looking to take days to play cricket unless they do so on their own time. And that's just it. The culture in the USA doesn't facilitate that and hence unlike say...an Olympic athlete, the cricketer in the USA will generally play what kind of cricket his or her personal time allows which generally will be the kind of cricket which in the end will only really interest him or her. And that is not going to be 4-day cricket since few people would be willing to jeopardize their day job for a side passion.

And unlike say baseball or basketball, cricket in the USA cannot be professional unless there is the fan base to support it at the grounds and watching on television to provide players with a salary that hasn't been printed out of thin air. And as in most sports fans are persons who would play the sport if they had the ability or time and are persons who actually understand and like a sport, then the prospects for the US cricket aren't fantastic unless cricket spreads in popularity outside of the immigrant communities from cricket countries OR unless like in the UAE or Fiji those immigrant communities from cricket communities eventually constitute a large percentage of the population in the country.
Test cricket itself means its supposed to be the ultimate test of a nation's cricketing skill, knowledge, ability, and stamina.


None of which matters without the supporting foundations for such skills to be heralded throughout a community and perhaps engender continued fan support and bring in new fans (hence the requirement for cricket to be featured in the news/media) or for such knowledge, ability and stamina to have be found among the player base (hence the need for domestic competitions mirroring the international formats) and for their to be a stage for the skills, knowledge, ability and stamina to be demonstrated on (hence the need for grounds/stadia).

Sarkar's skill, knowledge, ability and stamina would mean nothing if he hadn't been found in Bangladesh's domestic competitions; if his exploits had not been broadcasted in the media and potentially inspiring new fans and if there was no home ground for him to play on.
Expanding to 100+ Test nations is ridiculous just because they have the infrastructure,
Foundations. Not just infrastructure. Remember the difference. The foundations include the infrastructure, the competitions, coaching, and a culture of the sport.
just like letting me play professional tennis just because I have a racket is nonsensical.


Professional tennis is based on the foundations of regular competitions, coaching, tennis courts (usually of varying surfaces), umpires, ball boys and girls, sometimes line judges. And an actual fan base. One which can fill the stands even with ticket prices ranging from US$225-US$995 in the French Open or US$58-US$240 for Wimbledon.

Professional tennis is played by players from all over the world, but it is only really played in countries which have the foundations for it...usually countries where it is really popular (Czech Republic, Serbia, UK) and where there are foundations in place (USA, Australia, France, UK, Serbia, Czech Republic, etc).

The catch though is that tennis is often an individual sport and hence individuals can represent their country of nationality without necessarily having any other pre-conditions attached to that. Hence Novak Djokovic can represent Serbia while residing in Monaco (which if you will note is surrounded by (and for most purposes is a part of) France...a country with a lot of the foundations in place for truly professional tennis); the same applies to Tomáš Berdych of the Czech Republic (who also resides on Monaco) and Kevin Anderson of South Africa (he resides in the United States, not South Africa). Garry Balance on the other hand cannot represent Zimbabwe while never living there and not playing cricket there unless under exceptional circumstances.

So unless we are suggesting that test cricket eventually confine itself to a few major host grounds (Lords, the SCG, various Indian grounds) and that teams of players can be composed of persons who have never played cricket in the nations they supposedly represent then looking merely at quality misses the point about expanding cricket to nations rather than to individual players. Cricket cannot grow if it is going to model itself on tennis where players who want to become professional most often leave their countries to reside in those countries where tennis can be and is played professionally.

For all we know you could be a great professional tennis player. But until you take up a racquet, play on various surface, get coached and can get paid by fans willing to fork out dollars to see you play we will never know whether you really have the skills, stamina, etc. So yes, letting anyone play professional tennis with just a racquet is nonsensical but that is definitely not analogous (at all) to what I have been saying.
What the ICC needs to do is lay out a CLEAR criteria for Test status, which they haven't.
That's not correct. They have. Which is the path Afghanistan have been following and only now Ireland have belated started following (notice that Deutrom doesn't bang on about there being supposedly "no clear pathway" to test status anymore? He's shut his trap about that for some time now without the ICC changing one apostrophe on their full membership criteria document).
Now they have a Test Challenge but the details are still under wraps.
I honestly doubt that will lead to permanent full membership.

Sure it might give Ireland or Afghanistan a chance to play four test matches (2 home matches and 2 away matches) against one test nation. But that alone is unlikely to give teams test status unless the ICC plans to change their full membership criteria (I've yet to see anything indicating that). At best it might be used as an assessment exercise and so perform a role similar to the tour matches (some of which were first class and some considered as unofficial test marches) that full members used to play against associates in 1900s (such as the West Indians playing a 3-day or 4-day match against Ceylon on a tour to India or Sri Lanka playing a match against Bangladesh when it was an associate).

At worst all it does is have associates play test cricket once every four years...maybe;..when nations that would likely qualify for it should instead focus on getting full membership rather than merely test status attached to their associate membership. There isn't even any mention that the associate that qualifies for test challenge will get non-full member test status akin to the old "permanent" ODI status that was given to some associate members before the the ICC decided it wasn't permanent after all.
It may even be one of those things the ICC decides to scrap like the Test playoffs.
Or that.
Last edited by JHunter on Thu Apr 23, 2015 1:19 pm, edited 4 times in total.

JHunter
Posts: 160
Joined: Fri Apr 15, 2011 12:12 am

Re: Bangladesh Watch 2015-2019

Post by JHunter »

Kriterion_BD wrote:
That might be your opinion, but despite the cultural and social discrimination in Pakistan there were two players who hailed from East Pakistan (one being born there, the other having moved there at a young age after the 1947 Partition with his family) who played for full strength Pakistani sides in tests and unofficial tests: Niaz Ahmed Siddiqi and Raqibul Hassan. So the multi-day cricket there did manufacture test quality players of the time. The standard of the multi-day cricket in the 30s, 50s and 60s were in line with the standards of the wider country at the time. So the standards of 1930s Bengal would have been in line with that of India as a whole in the mid 1930s and that of East Pakistan would have been in line with that of Pakistan where the competitions were mostly amateur based in the 50s and 60s. Those standards may not have been enough to produce test players today, but they did produce test players in the 50s and 60s which is what matters.
I'm aware of Hasan, but never heard of Siddiqui. But still, just having two players of Test quality cannot warrant Test status. You either need at least 5-6 players of genuine quality or a team that synergisitically plays above its ability.


That's not what we were discussing though.

You said:

"Yes, we may have had multi-day cricket in the 50s, 60s, 70s due to our past as political entities within India and Pakistan, but they were not of the standard to either manufacture or maintain Test quality players"

And I simply demonstrated where that idea was clearly mistaken since the standard in Pakistan at the time was such that it manufactured two Test quality players coming from playing in East Pakistan.

There wasn't anything about a minimum number of test quality players being needed (and indeed there is no such requirement by the ICC). Given that nations and there teams can go through ebbs and flows, it would be pretty harsh to institute a rather arbitrary minimum number of players who must meet certain subjective (rather than objective) standards. That opens grounds to discrimination based on factors other than actual performance (so a player may be discriminated against because they don't "seem" to have the right "flair" or "potential" when in reality they may just have the wrong colour or surname or their style may not be pleasing to the eye but their work ethic means they will eventually come good).

East Pakistan/Bangladesh had neither until 2013.
And if Bangladesh had been promoted in 2013 instead of in 2000 when they had the foundations in place, Bangladeshi cricketers would probably not have advanced as far since they would probably never have played full member teams and had full member "A" team tours and so forth which undoubtedly helped refine some players and help administrators and selectors discover others. Note how today's super centurion Sarkar had performed well for Bangladesh A in late 2014 racking up scores of 56, 86 and 22. No full membership = no Bangladesh A v. other full member A team and hence Sarkar would probably have not been up to much in late 2014.
A team should at least be able to draw matches at home against a full strength "established" side to say they are "good enough" for Test cricket.
That would be nice but I don't think that's necessary or realistic.

Honestly, people take losing far too seriously. In a contest where there can be only one winner, somebody has to lose. Nobody says that to be a professional tennis player you must not lose against established players in order to be "good enough". A professional tennis player is one who simply gets paid to play because they devote their time to it like a job and are expected to not make the mistakes of amateurs as often as amateurs do. At the end of the day the worst professional tennis player is still considered a professional tennis player and the worst performing teams in the English Premier League, NFL, NBL, MLB, etc are still considered professional and top level teams. Only in cricket it seems do we wish to denigrate the ones at the bottom of the league as not being worthy of being in the league (despite the fact that some team HAS to come last in a league).

What if say...Afghanistan was a full member and lost matches at home against established sides but made 270-300 or more in at least one innings in each match and pushed all matches into the final day (or very late into the fourth day) and thus showed themselves capable of actually playing five-day cricket? Would they not be good enough then? Because it would seem based on your criteria that they would not be.
Also when SA played their first Tests, I don't think the cricket authorities were even aware of Test cricket's existence. SA just played cricket, and it was later on retroactively awarded Test status.
Indeed. Though that makes it more unusual no? Given the benefit of hindsight (the matches had already been played and South Africa had fared very, very badly in them) they still decided that these were test matches and awarded them that status. Whatever criteria they used they clearly didn't seem too concerned about the quality of play by South Africa between 1889 and the 1890s....

And we still have the example of New Zealand taking over 20 years and more than 40 matches before winning their first test match yet folks don't seriously argue that NZ were given full membership too early.

Kriterion_BD
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Re: Bangladesh Watch 2015-2019

Post by Kriterion_BD »

There wasn't anything about a minimum number of test quality players being needed (and indeed there is no such requirement by the ICC). Given that nations and there teams can go through ebbs and flows, it would be pretty harsh to institute a rather arbitrary minimum number of players who must meet certain subjective (rather than objective) standards. That opens grounds to discrimination based on factors other than actual performance (so a player may be discriminated against because they don't "seem" to have the right "flair" or "potential" when in reality they may just have the wrong colour or surname or their style may not be pleasing to the eye but their work ethic means they will eventually come good).
There is no requirement, and it is arbitrary and wholly subjective. Yet, you cannot expect a team to really compete with just 2 or 3 class players. And competing should be the point. Its true that the worst NFL or NBA team is equal in status and treatment as the best side, but that is after the fact that both of those leagues select players from a common Draft where only players of the finest class can enter to begin with. Being the 60th (and final) selection in the NBA draft still means you're a damn good basketball player and being the last pick in the 7th round of the NFL draft means you're a damn good football player. An NBA or NFL teams rank of being the worst team in the league has more to do with poor roster management (trades, free agency, unwise drafting), coaching failures, poor team chemistry than lack of infrastructure or lack of quality players. All players in those leagues are of a minimum (very high) standard of quality/class.

So there could be two possible models of Test cricket. Allow all teams to play or only allow an elite few with a arbitrary and subjective cutoff. I'm OK with the latter as long as a honest development process is in place to ensure that non-Test nations have the ability to attain Test status on merit and teams who prove themselves are given Test status. Unfortunately, that is being idealistic.
And if Bangladesh had been promoted in 2013 instead of in 2000 when they had the foundations in place, Bangladeshi cricketers would probably not have advanced as far since they would probably never have played full member teams and had full member "A" team tours and so forth which undoubtedly helped refine some players and help administrators and selectors discover others. Note how today's super centurion Sarkar had performed well for Bangladesh A in late 2014 racking up scores of 56, 86 and 22. No full membership = no Bangladesh A v. other full member A team and hence Sarkar would probably have not been up to much in late 2014.
Absolutely. Which is why I would support the elevation to Test status of BD if I wasn't a BD fan and even if they didn't deserve it. The same can be said for Afghanistan and maybe Nepal but wouldn't apply to say Nigeria or Japan.
What if say...Afghanistan was a full member and lost matches at home against established sides but made 270-300 or more in at least one innings in each match and pushed all matches into the final day (or very late into the fourth day) and thus showed themselves capable of actually playing five-day cricket? Would they not be good enough then? Because it would seem based on your criteria that they would not be.
Thats a valid point, if they kept games close, then they would deserve Test status regardless of final result.
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JHunter
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Re: Bangladesh Watch 2015-2019

Post by JHunter »

Kriterion_BD wrote:
There wasn't anything about a minimum number of test quality players being needed (and indeed there is no such requirement by the ICC). Given that nations and there teams can go through ebbs and flows, it would be pretty harsh to institute a rather arbitrary minimum number of players who must meet certain subjective (rather than objective) standards. That opens grounds to discrimination based on factors other than actual performance (so a player may be discriminated against because they don't "seem" to have the right "flair" or "potential" when in reality they may just have the wrong colour or surname or their style may not be pleasing to the eye but their work ethic means they will eventually come good).
There is no requirement, and it is arbitrary and wholly subjective. Yet, you cannot expect a team to really compete with just 2 or 3 class players. And competing should be the point.
Is competing (as you seem to view it) the point in any other sport where some teams perform very poorly? Or is participating when capable of doing so the basic point?

For example, Australia once beat American Samoa 31-0 in football (soccer) in a qualifying match for the 2002 FIFA World Cup no less.

Was the point then for American Samoa to compete equally with Australia or for American Samoa to actually play football (participate) against Australia as an equal in terms of international competition so that the best teams can truly be determined over time?

If you ask folks at FIFA I suspect they would tell you it's the latter and less so the former because realistically teams like American Samoa, Montserrat and Sao Tome e Principe will likely never win a world cup and may well never qualify for one. They almost certainly will not be beating France 5-2 any time soon.

If so, why are these teams allowed to play football and allowed to play football against teams that are outright favourites to give them a drubbing?

Why was Saudi Arabia even allowed to play against Germany only to lose 0-8? Or North Korea allowed to play against Portugal to lose 0-7?
Its true that the worst NFL or NBA team is equal in status and treatment as the best side, but that is after the fact that both of those leagues select players from a common Draft where only players of the finest class can enter to begin with.
Sure. And any nation which has put in place the necessary support systems to actually be able to host test matches and host domestic first-class matches and train umpires and train coaches is really a nation which has a first class (pun intended) cricketing system in comparison to say a place like...Mongolia. It shouldn't matter if in a nation doesn't have a system exactly like the Australian or English systems since realistically, a number of cricketing countries are not nearly as wealthy as Australian and English societies. But then just as how the Serbian and Czech professional tennis circuits and systems are not going to be the same as French or Australian professional tennis circuits/systems, then there is no need nor requirement that Afghan's developing cricketing culture and system must be a carbon copy of what pertains in England.
Being the 60th (and final) selection in the NBA draft still means you're a damn good basketball player and being the last pick in the 7th round of the NFL draft means you're a damn good football player.


And being the 60th test team means that your nation is still damn good to have in place a system that allows you to be capable of playing tests in the first place. Once again the difference between say Afghanistan and Mongolia is so large that it might as well be measured in light years. Mongolia isn't about to play test cricket and Mongolians seem to have little interest in cricket generally for there to be popular appeal to support a system of training umpires and coaches, having media coverage of the games and having players willing to play the games from school right up to the club level and over.
An NBA or NFL teams rank of being the worst team in the league has more to do with poor roster management (trades, free agency, unwise drafting), coaching failures, poor team chemistry than lack of infrastructure or lack of quality players. All players in those leagues are of a minimum (very high) standard of quality/class.


Possibly. Sometimes being the worst ranked team has to do with the fact that in any league of X number of teams, one team has to be placed last.

If teams 1-10 were only separated by say 10 points out of 100 points available then clearly all 10 teams were more or less capable of beating each other.

If the gaps are larger then it is quite likely that the lower ranked teams are having difficult due to many of the same things you say applies to the worst ranked NBA and NFL teams and less to do with the quality of the players themselves. For instance at the U-19 level many full member teams are actually more or less evenly matched. However once you move on past there a player from West Indies or Bangladesh may not translate that U-19 form into the senior team whereas an Australian or Indian player might. Clearly it isn't about the lack of quality unless we want to ascribe some kind of crackpot near-racist theory that West Indians and Bangladeshis simply don't mature as a people beyond 19 years of age. And they don't have a lack of the infrastructure (usually). So what is it?

Well for various nations the reasons for underperformance vary. For all of the lower ranked teams it is likely that there is a deficiency in coaching between the U-19 and senior levels (coaches may well be failing to get the most out of players or failing to correct their mistakes so that their true potential may be achieved). With Sri Lanka they have had many off-field issues with the board which are quite likely to have retarded the performance on the field. While the Sri Lankan players still take professional pride in their exploits, at the end of the day even the most professional player will become jaded with constant contractual disputes and the general craziness which goes on in SLC (scroll down to 1996 - Sri Lanka's twisted inheritance).

With the West Indies I have already outlined at length many of the issues but in sum:

- starting in 1993 with Peter Short, for a long time there was no stability in the WICB itself as presidents were basically only elected to serve one term (with the exception of Pat Rousseau if I recall correctly) and so as one president basically started a new programme to fix problems so identified they got voted out and a new face with new plans came in and did not continue the plans of the predecessor. This is one of the reasons why the Shell Cricket Academy in Grenada was launched in 2001 but then ended in 2005, which left WI without a regional cricket academy until the High Performance Centre was launched in 2010 and was also the reason why one would see a home-and-away first-class season one year and then a single round robin first-class season another year as different presidents wanted to focus what funds were available on the problems they thought to be the most pertinent. This has since ended with Julian Hunte serving 3 terms (2007-2013) and now Dave Cameron serving two terms so far (2013 onwards).

- while WICB presidents went through a rotating door, the WIPA experienced quite a bit of stability with a president (Ramnarine) who laudably fought hard for players' rights and better pay for first-class players to keep in line with inflation over time, but lamentably encouraged laziness, short tempers (players were now conditioned to strike for everything...they even striked when the board refused to negotiate directly with them during that Indian tour...despite the board only following the outcome of a previous strike and lawsuit by the players and WIPA when the board tried to do exactly that - negotiate directly with the players concerning a dispute) and quite possibly trickery (the abandonment of the Indian tour was in part due to Ramnarine reportedly holding a WICB director to his word in an email where he mistakenly agreed to certain monies being paid which were in fact sponsorship monies that were to be paid in lieu of retainer contracts but due to Ramnarine holding the WICB to the word of one of it's directors in said written email the players continued receiving the sponsorship money even when they began receiving retainer contracts - apparently the WICB has now attempted to end this since they believe it constitutes double payment and wished to use that money to fully professionalize the domestic first class system...the senior team players though having gotten used to being paid handsome sums regardless of performance threw an tantrum and we got that very sorry episode). With players now conditioned to have their cake and eat it too (first they sued the WICB for daring to negotiate with them and bypassing WIPA and then years later some of the very same players demanded that the WICB bypass WIPA and negotiate directly with them...while they were still paid up members of WIPA (unlike Marlon Samuels I believe who is a free agent)).

Bangladesh has had issues which I think are due in part to many players not really staying on for very long (either retiring or being discarded) as the Bangla selectors tried to find really good players. In the process some players who probably were really good but needed to be given a run fell by the wayside. Additionally and perhaps more importantly Bangladesh have come in at a time when there are fewer and fewer tour matches as a I pointed out here:
But importantly for them they were continuously being exposed to good sides and in the process got better themselves. At the same time though they played good sides regularly the frequency of play was such that they weren't crammed with cricket and had time to play more tour matches. Looking back, NZ played their first test in 1930 and did not win their first test match until 1956. This represented 45 matches in 26 years. Contrast this with Bangladesh which played 45 matches and had won 1 during that time, but had done all of this in 7 years instead of 26. So NZ played 1.7 test matches per year, while Bangladesh played 6.4. However, note that I am fairly sure that NZ probably played 6 matches a year or more when one includes tour matches (as quite often there were more tour matches than there were test matches and sometimes (at least once) the full NZ team would go on tours in which they only played tour matches - so NZ quite possibly played 4-5 multi-innings matches per year). Bangladesh on the other hand does not have the luxury of tour matches anymore because of the unrealistically short scheduling.
If Bangladesh were to play say 2 or 3 tour matches (against grade cricket and state sides and maybe Australia A) ahead of a two match series in Australia I think that Bangladesh would (i) acclimatize better and (ii) perform better even if they didn't win against Oz. That's why I think rather than tiers, we need to reintroduce the tradition of tour matches and as consequence lengthen (possibly double) the time period of the international cricket cycle and NOT fill it all up with straight international matches, but include more tour matches. Tour matches not just between full members but including associates and affiliates. That is how cricket used to develop in the past and it could be a very cost effective way of developing it in the future.
So there could be two possible models of Test cricket. Allow all teams to play
That's generally the model of all international sports really. So there is only one realistic model.

or only allow an elite few with a arbitrary and subjective cutoff. I'm OK with the latter as long as a honest development process is in place to ensure that non-Test nations have the ability to attain Test status on merit and teams who prove themselves are given Test status. Unfortunately, that is being idealistic.
I wouldn't consider that idealistic since under that scenario "ideally" the only teams playing would be India, Australia, England, New Zealand and South Africa. I'm not Indian, Australian, Kiwi, English or South African so I don't see why it should be "OK" that somebody (who???) gets to decide an arbitrary and subjective cutoff (what number?) which could affect the ability of myself or my colleagues from playing test cricket despite the fact that the territory I live in would have all the systems in place to actually host test cricket. That's basically telling others that you may as well not bother play. That's a surefire way to kill cricket outside of the "chosen few" no matter what "honest development process" is put in place. And to be quite frank, an honest development process and "merit" cannot possibly go hand in hand with an elitist system that has an "arbitrary and subjective cutoff". When you give others and especially only a small clique the ability to decide on an arbitrary and subjective cutoff what you get is often corruption more often than honesty. Merit by definition would mean that something is deserved no matter what the personal opinion of someone is with regards to that. Subjective means based on someone's personal opinion.

Besides, who decides which persons get to decide on the arbitrary and subjective cutoff? And who gets to decide if the cutoff is too small or too large? That's not idealistic but it is definitely unrealistic and potentially messy.
And if Bangladesh had been promoted in 2013 instead of in 2000 when they had the foundations in place, Bangladeshi cricketers would probably not have advanced as far since they would probably never have played full member teams and had full member "A" team tours and so forth which undoubtedly helped refine some players and help administrators and selectors discover others. Note how today's super centurion Sarkar had performed well for Bangladesh A in late 2014 racking up scores of 56, 86 and 22. No full membership = no Bangladesh A v. other full member A team and hence Sarkar would probably have not been up to much in late 2014.
Absolutely. Which is why I would support the elevation to Test status of BD if I wasn't a BD fan and even if they didn't deserve it. The same can be said for Afghanistan and maybe Nepal but wouldn't apply to say Nigeria or Japan.
Right. And note the difference:

Afghanistan and Nepal = developing cricketing cultures, similar to the West Indies, Bangladesh, England, etc.

Nigeria and Japan = no cricketing cultures whatsoever. People simply don't follow cricket there. Which is why we (a West Indian and a Bangladeshi) are having this discussion while Nigerians and Japanese generally cannot be found discussing cricket online (they would more likely be found discussing football (Nigeria and Japan) and baseball (Japan)).

Note the differences carefully. In the West Indies (and likely all the other full members), people talk about cricket. Cricketing idioms and terms are a part of normal speech. You can tell someone in the West Indies that "X licked me for six!" and you are likely to be understood to mean that you were left stunned. If you went to Japan and said that you had been "hit for six!" most people would look at you quizzically and perhaps think that you were a tad eccentric. The vast majority would certainly never be able to relate the phrase back to cricket.

Hence there would be no point in Japan or Nigeria being test nations since those nations generally aren't bothered one way or another about cricket and you would be hard pressed to find people willing to pay to watch it (a lot more of them might watch a twenty20 match...for free...maybe..just for the novelty). Meanwhile here in the Caribbean, the upcoming Caribbean Premier League has already seen people buying up tickets online when they went on sale....in Lent/Easter (back in March)...for a competition that starts in in late June. I have a number of friends who have already got their tickets and some who will come into town just to watch the matches. This is what helps sustain a first-class system. A larger set of fans will have the time and be willing to watch a twenty20 and pay a premium to watch it. These funds partially support the first-class matches which will normally see a tidy number of spectators on the weekends (who has time in the week except maybe at lunch to watch a first-class match?) and this in turn supports test match cricket (which in all countries usually sees better turnouts on the weekend match days or on the final day of a gripping match). If people aren't even likely to pay top dollar to watch domestic twenty20 matches (and list A matches) much less international twenty20 and ODI, how many people are going to come out to watch a test match in those places if traditionally the numbers watching a test has been a subset of the numbers that could afford the time to watch an ODI or T20?

What if say...Afghanistan was a full member and lost matches at home against established sides but made 270-300 or more in at least one innings in each match and pushed all matches into the final day (or very late into the fourth day) and thus showed themselves capable of actually playing five-day cricket? Would they not be good enough then? Because it would seem based on your criteria that they would not be.
Thats a valid point, if they kept games close, then they would deserve Test status regardless of final result.
Right, but as I said, too many are focused on the losing rather than how the game is played. Some of the greatest performances can be done by a team going down in defeat. Two of the most memorable fourth innings for me both occurred in 2008 when both New Zealand and Bangladesh went down in defeat chasing totals in excess of 500 but ended up making 400+ all out. That was a LOT of gumption being shown, and the teams showed real skill, stamina and mental strength.

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Re: Bangladesh Watch 2015-2019

Post by Kriterion_BD »

I have never supported the ICC's elitism, and still don't, but I'm forced here to sound like a BCCI elitocrat.

Technically all the cricket sides have a shot at qualifying for the World Cup via the World Cricket League. Japan and Nigeria could in theory qualify by a series of promotions from Division 7 or whatever to the WCQ tournament in Bangladesh in 2018. They won't make it in the same way Bangladesh won't ever make it to a FIFA world cup.

Now Test cricket has been closed to all but the top teams. Now I agree with you the criteria is unclear and the idea of their being 10 or however many Test nations is arbitrary. But the alternative is a situation where Australia plays 5 day games vs Fiji, Vanatua, Chile, and Portugal is ridiculous.

The logistics don't support it either. 365 days in the year, say that a professional athelet can reasonably play 180 days a year and train 90 days a year to leave 90 days of rest time during the year. This means in theory you can play 36 Tests a year, but factoring rest/travel days that number would shrink to maybe 20 tests per year. If Australia has to be the above mentioned minnows, that leaves little room for marquee matchups like the Ashes or Border-Gavaskar. And cricket does have an obligation to sell a quality product to the viewers (you and I).

That cannot happen if we watch South Africa beating Lithuania by an innings inside a single session of play.

Just illustrate, Papua New Guniea and Hong Kong are rank minnows in international cricket. But did you know that the highest 50-over total ever was posted by PNG? They scored over 500 runs in a 50 over game against some team. That means there are teams so bad, that even PNG can score 500 runs in fifty overs.

Several years ago, Hong Kong beat Myanmar by 420 runs in a 50 over match. Hong Kong batted first and was 440-2. They then bowled Myanmar out for just 20.
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JHunter
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Re: Bangladesh Watch 2015-2019

Post by JHunter »

Kriterion_BD wrote:I have never supported the ICC's elitism, and still don't, but I'm forced here to sound like a BCCI elitocrat.
Only because you are trying to defend against an argument I was never making (that it will be some kind of free-for-all) and in the process you are now supporting the arguments of the very people you rightly called out for their crass ignorance back on page 1....
Technically all the cricket sides have a shot at qualifying for the World Cup via the World Cricket League. Japan and Nigeria could in theory qualify by a series of promotions from Division 7 or whatever to the WCQ tournament in Bangladesh in 2018. They won't make it in the same way Bangladesh won't ever make it to a FIFA world cup.


Quite true, but all sides have the chance to do so. Just as how all countries in the world have a chance to qualify for full membership if they put in the work both on and off the field (much as how Bangladesh would need to put in the work on and off the field if it was really interested in qualifying for a FIFA World Cup).
Now Test cricket has been closed to all but the top teams.
No it isn't. It's open to any nation which can support it. The top teams happen to be those that have put in place such foundations that they are for the most part far removed from other territories in terms of numbers of players, paying fans, grounds, etc...i.e. they have made the game into something far more than an amateur outfit. That's why the ICC has the membership criteria guidelines. If it was really closed the ICC would simply not have the document and openly declared that full membership was not open to others. At the most basic though the concept is that countries which have a particular domestic form of cricket can play the international form of the same format (those with 3/4 day domestic cricket get to play 5 day cricket; those with 40-50 over list A cricket get to play ODIs; those with 20 over cricket get to play T20Is, etc). If that basic concept is broken then what happens is that:

- you get countries trying the Warren Deutrom method of test cricket which is to pick test players from some other country's first class system without having even a most basic league. At that point you would start to introduce the idea into the minds of administrators looking to maximize earnings while minimizing investment...might not be long before some of the poorer boards decide they can scrap the first-class domestic games and just let amateurs organize their own 2-day weekend matches if they want and just select eligible national players from the English county teams. The equivalent by the way would be if like Ivory Coast or Ghana played no domestic 11-a-side football (and probably only played 6-a-side football at most) and then had as their national selection strategy to select only players who made it to the various European 11-a-side club competitions.

- you lose the basis on which players are selected to play test cricket in the first place. Test players are often picked based on their first-class performance, yet often we have people calling for say...the Irish team to play test cricket based almost solely on their limited overs performance against non-associate/affiliates. That's always been a puzzling position.
Now I agree with you the criteria is unclear


The criteria are quite clear (have a 3/4 day competition, train coaches and umpires and other personnel, keep records, maintain close regular links with the media, national team and individuals should perform well (note, there is nothing in there about needing to not lose), have cricket in schools and clubs and women's cricket, have a development plan, grounds must conform to ICC standards, cricket culture...) except to those for whom it is inconvenient because it will require...you know...actual work to be put in before test status is achieved.
and the idea of their being 10 or however many Test nations is arbitrary.
It isn't arbitrary.

If it is, then that means someone decided that it should only be 10. Except nobody decided it should only be 10. We have 10 today because after the first 3, more nations were eventually promoted following applications in a number of cases with some having to re-apply for us to even reach 10 nations by 2000. Sri Lanka and Zimbabwe in particular are stark examples of the fact that it wasn't some pre-determined number of teams since Sri Lanka could have been a member in 1975 if Pakistan's sponsorship of their application hadn't reportedly been so embarrassing and Zimbabwe could have been a full member in 1989 if England hadn't vetoed it. Unless we are to speculate that some all powerful secret society/cabal within the ICC has always determined from the beginning that it must be 10 teams and no more...ever, and that they planned it all out from 1909, right down to the partition of India, liberation of Bangladesh, withdrawal and re-admission of South Africa, the voluntary giving up of veto rights by Australia and England, and the end of Rhodesia and admission of Zimbabwe....

Since I don't buy conspiracy theories (and I'm pretty sure you don't either) and since it's quite clear that the ICC has never decided that it should only be 10 and no more, then 10 is not an arbitrary number. It is the current number (and one which I expect will change if Ireland and Afghanistan keep going the way they are). But as I noted elsewhere when one poster bet that no new test nation would be admitted within the next 20-30 years, that time period is actually the norm when it comes to admissions:
Hence why the only full members are still England, Australia and South Africa with the first two retaining veto powers.........

ICC full membership has expanded from 3 in 1909 to 10 in 2000. Three members were admitted in 1926, one in 1953, one in 1981, one in 1992 and the last one in 2000. So on average the ICC's full membership expands every 18 years. And at one time it took 28 years before a new full member was admitted. So 20-30 years is not out of the norm (in fact it is the norm)
Before one can declare 10 to be arbitrary, one needs to show where the ICC has rejected an application for full membership and stated that ten is the limit. As far as I know the only countries which have applied for full membership other than the existing 10 full members are Kenya (which does not fulfill the criteria) and Ireland (which is putting things in place and hopes for full membership by 2020).
But the alternative is a situation where Australia plays 5 day games vs Fiji, Vanatua, Chile, and Portugal is ridiculous.


1. That alternative is ridiculous but it is also a straw man because that is not an alternative I was suggesting would even remotely happen. The reason? None of those societies are even vaguely interested in anything other than 50 over cricket at most, and excepting for maybe Fiji the vast majority of the people in those countries don't care or even know about cricket. For them cricket is as foreign as ice skating is to Libya.

2. IF one of those countries (for example Fiji) were to experience a developing cricketing culture and one day become like Ireland or Afghanistan are today or like how Sri Lanka was in the 1970s there isn't any reason that they shouldn't play against Australia.
The logistics don't support it either. 365 days in the year, say that a professional athelet can reasonably play 180 days a year and train 90 days a year to leave 90 days of rest time during the year. This means in theory you can play 36 Tests a year, but factoring rest/travel days that number would shrink to maybe 20 tests per year.
Whatever works.
If Australia has to be the above mentioned minnows,
That wouldn't happen for the reasons I've repeatedly outlined but that seems to be ignored in favour of throwing up the names of various random countries, the likes of which have zero interest in cricket really. But whatever floats one's boat.
that leaves little room for marquee matchups like the Ashes or Border-Gavaskar....
Only in the universe you seem to be trying to create, but which I've said countless times is not something that would happen.

Okay, look on it this way. Realistically speaking outside of the 10 full members the only other countries which *might* develop a cricketing culture and foundations to support test cricket are really: Ireland, Afghanistan, Nepal, Scotland, Netherlands, Kenya/East Africa and...maybe Namibia, PNG, and maybe even Malaysia and Singapore if we want to get really wild. Other than that we can pretty much assume that no other country would do this for at least another 30 years.

So at best in the next 100 years we might see 10 more countries developing the foundations and wanting to develop those foundations. Personally I think it might be more like 2-4 countries for the foreseeable future (next 30 years). After all, Malaysia and Singapore have had the means for decades, but it hasn't really spread that much among their populations for some reason. What we see now might be what pertains for them a generation or two from now. Ireland and Afghanistan are building steadily and I expect they will eventually be given full member status. Outside of those two, Scotland and the Netherlands had announced plans for 2-day or 3-day cricket but nothing has happened yet. That's a positive on their part, but the lack of implementation of even simple two-day cricket suggests that even if players there might want to play multi-day cricket they aren't as eager as players in Afghanistan were, otherwise the cricket boards would have pushed harder to implement their own announced plans based on the desire of the majority of domestic players. As a matter of fact we have an article by Rod Lyall (a university professor who is Netherlands editor for CricketEurope) in which he writes that "the clubs were unwilling to accept the idea" of a two-day tournament and that pork-barrel politics and apparently incompetent scheduling killed the attempt to introduce it, with not a single voice even asking what happened to the proposed two-day tournament at the next general meeting of the KNCB. As if all concerned were happy to see it quietly fade away. That was in 2009 and nothing has happened since. Kenya (whether it remains separate or unifies with Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi politically as the East African Federation as planned) is a big question mark because they actually did have a 3-day league which ended up being a 2-day league due to the delays from the election violence, but even that 2-day league has not been repeated. Hopefully it will be, but for now we just simply don't know. Nepal is a possible dark horse because it seems that conditions are right there for a real indigenous cricketing culture to develop - I can't think of very many associates or affiliates where interest in the the game among natives spread quickly enough that for a time teams in tournaments had to be restricted until more facilities were developed in the 1990s. Nor one where a private company was able to organize a national 50-overs tournament and announce plans for a twenty-20 version without any support of the cricket board (and with the cricket board refusing to support the initiative without a name change). You can read about that controversy in the same article here, where the Cricket Association of Nepal just recently announced that it will organize a two-day cricket tournament this year. Although to be fair plans were announced for two-day cricket back in 2007 as well which apparently didn't go anywhere. So we will have to wait and see. In Nepal, the cricket bodies, private companies and government are all willingly involved in cricket. That's a sign for a cricketing culture much as how one can see the most popular types of sports cultures by looking at the US military academy's and US naval academy's sports involvement; common to both of them: baseball, basketball, American football, and even lacrosse. Football (soccer), ice hockey and rugby are played by them as well but not played by both. What is not played is cricket. There is simply not enough interest to get these federal military academies to have cricket as part of their collegiate sports programmes. Finally Namibia and Papua New Guinea are making strides with their national team by sending their national team to perform in domestic multi-day and limited overs crickets in their neighbours (and former colonial rulers) South Africa and Australia respectively - Namibia plays in the CSA 3-day, 1-day and T20 provincial tournaments and PNG have played two-day, one-day and I believe twenty20 in South Australia's premier league for a couple seasons now. However neither seems to have any plans so far to introduce extended forms of cricket at home. They might well be content with where they are.

So overall it would seem Ireland and Afghanistan are very likely; Nepal is actually likely; Scotland is a possibility; Kenya/East Africa is a question mark; Malaysia and Singapore have the potential but seemingly no real interest; The Netherlands are a definite no for the foreseeable future (if clubs are opposed to the idea of two-day cricket then they just don't want multi-day cricket - and it is little wonder that they have 4 wins, 9 draws and 15 losses from 28 matches in the Intercontinental Cup); and Namibia and PNG are building but their ultimate aims are unclear. It really is more like 3-4 teams within the next 50 years.

Right now we have 12 named test trophies contested between 8 countries (not including Pakistan and Bangladesh I think) and some of those named trophies are no longer marquee match ups anyway. And some are not played every year normally anyway.

Even with 20 test nations there would still be room for marquee match ups like the Ashes just as how one has room for many fixtures in football without each team having to play every other team (when was the last time France played Rwanda for example? Then think of the last time France played Germany or England or Italy). And since for the rest of our lifetimes it is unlikely to reach 20 full members anyway, then this just underlines the fact that there can be time found for the marquee match ups.
And cricket does have an obligation to sell a quality product to the viewers (you and I).


Quite true. But to get quality doesn't mean you have to use an arbitrary number. If 20 nations have the foundations all it means is that viewers have a wider menu in what they can watch in terms of match ups since the 20 nations would have the foundations in place to ensure that even if some of them had piss poor teams today, that within a given time period they should churn out some quality players again. After all cricket like all sports goes in cycles no? Even Australia were once in the dog house.
That cannot happen if we watch South Africa beating Lithuania by an innings inside a single session of play.
I've repeatedly said that isn't what I have called for and it isn't something I foresee as ever having a realistic chance of happening (because there is no interest in a society such as Lithuania's), so why do you keep bringing up stuff like that? Why keep making strawmen arguments?
Just illustrate, Papua New Guniea and Hong Kong are rank minnows in international cricket. But did you know that the highest 50-over total ever was posted by PNG?
That's great but it wasn't an ODI. It was a 50 over match. Not all 50 over matches are ODIs just as how not all multi-day matches are test matches. ODIs are played between nations with the foundations and/or nations that seem to be building them. The highest ODI score is 443/9 by Sri Lanka against the Netherlands, but then how far off is that total from the 430+ scores by South Africa and Australia against each other and the 400+ scores that full members have scored against each other?

[edit: And when it comes to test preparations, PNG at least are beginning to get serious by playing multi-day cricket in South Australia's league. They have some ways to go and need to introduce the concept at home, but it's a start. And it's one reason why I think they may not do too badly in the upcoming ICC Intercontinental Cup - Afghanistan used to do something similar when they played in the Pakistani Quaid-E-Azam Trophy (Grade II) and Inter-District Senior Tournament two day competitions and Cornelius Trophy three day competition. Hong Kong on the other hand have played in 1 edition of the intercontinental cup (2005) and have played in all three editions of the ACC Fast Track Countries Tournament where they came first in 2004/05 and then last in 05/06 and 06/07. The more consistent performers in that ACC tournament before it folded were the UAE and Nepal, but only Nepal seems interested in building their foundations, while for the UAE they seem to be quite content to host a lot of cricket and put on a lot of 50-over and 20-over cricket. I suppose that's part of the reason why in the Intercontinental Cup, the UAE has had a middling record of 5 wins, 9 draws and 9 losses from 23 matches while teams like Afghanistan, Ireland, Scotland, and Namibia are the best performing associates in the Intercontinental Cup.]
They scored over 500 runs in a 50 over game against some team. That means there are teams so bad, that even PNG can score 500 runs in fifty overs.


As well as one might expect. But then how does that really differ from Australia whooping American Samoa by 31 goals to nil in a world cup qualifier? Both teams were allowed to participate and at the end of the day one team demonstrated it was the much better team overall. That's kind of the whole point of sports really.
Several years ago, Hong Kong beat Myanmar by 420 runs in a 50 over match. Hong Kong batted first and was 440-2. They then bowled Myanmar out for just 20.
Good for them, but Myanmar is not a country that is serious about cricket anyway. So what difference does that make? Myanmar isn't going to be clamouring for test cricket any time soon really.

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