From the leaked memo below, it seems that Ryan ten Doeschate's wonderful hundred and his Netherlands side's plucky performance against England yesterday has caused the ICC to have a re-think about the number of teams that should be involved in the 2015 World Cup. However as the memo explains, the new outcome is not what you might have expected with the repercussions for England being potentially serious…
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INTERNAL ICC MEMO
TOP SECRET: EYES ONLY
SUBJECT: 2015 WORLD CUP PARTICIPATING COUNTRIES
Following our previous decision to reduce the number of participating countries in the World Cup to 10 teams in 2015, the events yesterday of the England versus Netherlands match has forced us to reconsider.
England's bowling performance was quite simply unacceptable and the less said about their shambolic fielding the better. Indeed, if James Anderson and Kevin Pietersen were Pakistani then their fielding mix-up would warrant an ICC investigation into corruption.
The ICC simply cannot tolerate this level of ineptitude in the World Cup, which lest it not be forgotten is our premier tournament.
And given the continuous desperate performances of the England team in the World Cup since 1992, the ICC has had to radically re-appraise its plans for the 2015 tournament in Australia.
We’ve already managed to rid ourselves of the annoying minnows and their increasing propensity to knock some of the big teams out early and therefore deprive the ICC of the bundles of cash we make from this gravy train tournament.
From a public perspective of course, we made this move under the auspices of enhancing quality by removing the sub-standard teams. We willnow apply the same logic for England, and also for Bangladesh and Zimbabwe too. Additionally, New Zealand, Pakistan and West Indies do not bring the requisite crowds, sponsorship and television cameras, so they should also be removed.
Henceforth from 2015, the World Cup will be made up of four sides – Australia, India, South Africa and Sri Lanka. The latter can take on the role of the token minnows.
The format will be as follows. First of all there will be a group stage where everyone plays each other three times. This will help decide the semi-final line-ups. The semi-finals will be played as a best of seven match series, with the winners progressing to a final series played as a best of 11 matches.
We have our fingers on the pulse here at the ICC and know exactly what the playing public want – less knockout competition and more of the top teams playing each other in a kind of Groundhog Day Cricket World Cup.
This initiative will be rubber-stamped at the next meeting of the ICC's Executive Committee.
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Where next?
World Cup Team Previews: Part 5 - England: How far can resilience take them?
An XI of players likely to bid a fond farewell to ODI after the World Cup
Our XI to shine at the World Cup
World Cup Team Previews: Part 6 - Ireland/Canada/Kenya/Netherlands: Last chance for the minnows?
What Cricket can learn from Football in staging a World Cup
Check out all our Reverse Sweep heroes and zeroes including amongst others Daryl Harper, Ijaz Butt, Graham Gooch, Kamran Akmal and Douglas Jardine
If you like this, follow us on Twitter @thereversesweep
As far as the business community goes it makes perfect sense.
Posted by: JackieL | Wednesday, February 23, 2011 at 13:28
Hi there,
We have recently set up Cricket Ireland TV on youtube. See here - www.youtube.com/cricketirelandtv & www.irishcricket.org . The sole aim of the project is just to raise awareness and support for the great sport of cricket here in Ireland & around the cricketing World. There is a nice mix of viral skills videos, player interviews, tour diaries & celebs backing our boys in green.
I am wondering if you may be interested in doing a piece on your blog ahead of Ireland's first game in the world cup on Friday. If you'd like to embed any of the videos onto your site that would be great as well.
If you need any further information or help with emdedding please don't hesistate to contact me.
Kind Regards
Andrew Leonard
Cricket Ireland TV
[email protected]
Posted by: Andrew Leonard - Cricket Ireland TV | Thursday, February 24, 2011 at 01:58
For a change this is quite amusing! Well done, keep it up.
Posted by: Ian Jackson | Tuesday, March 01, 2011 at 14:05
Thanks for your kind (I think!) words Ian
Posted by: The Reverse Sweep | Wednesday, March 02, 2011 at 10:16