maehara wrote:Kriterion_BD wrote:The way the ICC treat Ireland is indeed a travesty.
There are Full Members who got their status far more easily than what Ireland are being expected to do, that's for sure
No doubt. When South Africa gained full membership in the 1800s they only had 2 day domestic cricket and were clearly not ready.
That said,
ALL current full members gained their status on the fact that they had domestic multi-day cricket (even Bangladesh despite the popular misconception otherwise). Something which for years Ireland was extremely negligent about. As I've pointed out elsewhere the Irish really only have themselves to blame in this regard for not making their case stronger years ago.
- that door was made particularly heavy and hard to move after Bangladesh were 'promoted'.
This sounds like a myth to me. I would love to see a source (internet or otherwise) where it is shown that the ICC actually changed the criteria to make it more stringent after Bangladesh gained full membership in 2000.
Any objective consideration of what Ireland have been doing over the past 10 years - growing support for the game in Ireland, results by the national teams, structures & sponsorship put into place by Cricket Ireland - should make the decision a gimme, but the ICC just don't operate that way...
Nope. In the the past 10 years (2005-2015) Ireland have done a lot in terms of growing support for the game in Ireland, gaining sponsorship and having a national team produce results. BUT in terms of one very clear criterion with regards to cricket structure they were attempting to spit into the wind - that of cutting back on the all the fat (in terms of limited overs domestic cricket) and putting in place the right multi-day domestic structure structure to allow for the foundations of first-class cricket and the ability of Ireland to potentially develop test and first-class players without
needing to leech off of England's first-class county competition.
Remember Ireland shot to prominence in 2007. Just two years into this 10 year period. They ONLY established a multi-day domestic cricket competition in 2013. A full 8 years into this "past 10 years". Meanwhile they continued with a 50-overs competition that at one point had 35 club teams if I remember rightly (and I well remember years ago discussing this with some Irish cricket fans on cricketeurope and suggesting that the 50-over competition could be reduced in terms of the number of teams and days played and the time and money saved could have been used to start up something like the current 3-day InterProvincial Series...they were not taken up with the idea and insisted that the there was no reason to do that and that the ICC should promote Ireland and give sufficient funding for Ireland to pay its players professionally...at that point I realized further debate was as pointless as discussing great works of literature with a stone wall).
Afghanistan shot to prominence in in 2008 (a year after Ireland) but put in place a 3 day tournament 2 years before Ireland did so...and with considerably less resources and greater challenges.
Had Ireland instituted something like the current Inter Prov Series in say...2009 or even 2010 (and they could have done so, there is no doubt about that), then Ireland would now have had 5-6 seasons of 3-day cricket and perhaps in 2013 could have looked to converting the tournament into a 4-day format as Afghanistan recently did.
Back in 2013, the Irish plan had been to attempt to have the ICC declare their 3-day competition to be of first-class standard by 2015 and to get test status by 2020. If that timeline had been shifted based on a start date of 2009 for the 3-day competition, Cricket Ireland could have aimed for the ICC to adjudge the competition as first-class by 2011 and perhaps be aiming for test status in 2016 (i.e. next year)...
At
that point the ICC would be under a lot more pressure to admit Ireland to full membership. Deutrom shot Irish cricket in the foot between 2009 and 2013.