Monday 28 March 2011

We need to have regional tournaments.

ICC recently went ahead with proposals to reduce 2015 WC to 10 nations. While all sports are for increasing the no of teams, in cricket we still have our colonial mindset and went the opposite way. As a sop to the new nations ICC offered them a 16 nation World T-20 and that will be held twice before 2015 WC in 2012 in SL and 2014 in BD. If ICC is so serious for a 10 nation CWC then what about the exposure to Associate nations.

To ensure that we give right exposure to the lesser nations we should go ahead with regional tournaments to be held once in 4 years replacing Champions Trophy. We know Champions trophy brings in revenue. To ensure that these regional tournaments also bring in revenue we should have them in the shortest format i.e T20. Asia will surely give revenue's to ICC via ACC while the others may take some time. The closest to earning a revenue would be ECC. These tournaments would go ahead as per present ranking like this

ASIA
Group A:-Ind, BD, Afg, HK
Group B:-SL, Pak, Nep,UAE
Top 2 from each group go into semi finals and then finals

AFRICA
League:-SA, Zim, Ken, Nam, Ugan
Top 2 go into finals

EUROPE
League:-Eng, Ire,Scot, Neth, Wales & Italy. Wales though a part of eng would field a seperate team here
Top 2 reach the finals. This tournament can be played in Ireland or Netherlands

AMERICAS
League:-WI, Can, USA & Bermuda
Top 2 reach the finals

EAP
League:-Aus, NZ & PNG
Top 2 in Final

The tournament should go ahead to create compact scheduling. On a weekday 2 matches and weekend 3 matches should be played. The longest of this tournament would be the Asia Cup. Let us show an sample schedule of it

Day 1 (Sat):-
1 PM:- BD V Afg
5 PM:-SL V Pak
9 PM:-Ind V HK

Day 2 (Sun)
1 PM:- Nep V UAE
5 PM:-SL V Nep
9 PM:- Ind V Afg

Day 3 (Mon)
5 PM:- BD V HK
9 PM:- Pak V UAE

Day 4 (Tue)
5 PM:- Afg V HK
9 PM:- Ind V BD

Day 5 (Wed)
5 PM:- SL V UAE
9 PM:- Pak V Nep

Day 6 (Thrus)
Break /Reserve day

Day 7 (Fri)
5 PM:- SF 1
9 PM:- SF 2

Day 8 (Sat)
9 PM:- Final

And this is the longest of all schedule. The shortest ones can be finished in 5 days. I hope ICC goes ahead and gives exposure to the lesser teams


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