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Zimbabwe 'A' to Play in Restructured Intercontinental Cup

Wed, 20/05/2009 - 11:03 — maehara

The ICC have announced that the Intercontinental Cup will be expanded and split into two divisions from the 2009/10 competition - the top division will include the six Associate sides with ODI status (Ireland, Scotland, Canada, Netherlands, Afghanistan and Kenya) along with a Zimbabwean side, while the second division will see the other sides in the ICC's High Performance Programme (Namibia, Bermuda, Uganda and UAE) compete for the new Intercontinental Shield. An interview with Zim coach Walter Chawaguta that appeared in this weekend's Sunday News indicates that the Zimbabwean side will be Zimbabwe 'A':

“It is a good idea for us to play in the Intecontinental Cup. I am made to understand that our A side will take part which is good because we have been calling for more matches for the A side”.

That's quite a clever move on ZC's part - the 'A' side have performed well against Associate sides this season and so seem to be the best fit for the competition, while seeing the 'A' side lose to Associates, should it happen, shouldn't lead to any adverse pressure arising over Zim's Full Member status, which would have certainly been an issue if the full national side had been fielded.

The move should also meet with the approval of the top Associate sides, particularly Ireland, who have been calling for more opportunities to play against Full Member 'A' sides as a way of gauging their own readiness for moving to full Test status.
ICC - ICC Intercontinental Cup to be expanded to two divisions for 2009-10 | Sunday News - Chawaguta Speaks Out

Comments

Wed, 27/05/2009 - 22:44 — andruid

Another ICC blag

Once again the ICC have managed to create a whole world of problems in attempting to fix a few old ones. While Zimbabwe have been very 'clever' with the situation by neatly entereing their A side in the competition in order to try build a case to return to Test cricket there is a whole world of problems that the ICC has seemingly quite willingly created by the way thye have gone about revamping this tournament (or their failure to so thoroughly).

First of all the criteria they have used to dtermine who ends up in which division completely spits in the face of the performances of the 8 initial members of the Intercontinental Cup. Its almost as though the ICC haven't been watching their own bloody tournament . Why for rthe love of christ have Namibia, who have been faily competeitive in the Intercontinental Cup (even topping the league standings before losing out to Ireland in the final last season) been pushed into Division two, with no hope of returnijng till at least the next World Cup cycle? Apparently because they did not make the top 8 teams at the OD World Cup Qualifiers in April. On the other hand Afghanistan, for all their List A achievement, have yet to play FC matches against anyone, but because they had a brilliant 50 over tournament, march straight into Division one of the Intercontinental Cup. Its like relagating Liverpool FC from the EPL on the grounds that they had a poor FA Cup run, and promoting some 3rd Division side because they had a good year in the Cup.

Whilst it is very good that the ICC have finally thought to introduce Prize money, they could certainly do abit more to encourage teams to put out their best XI. After all what good will it do the likes of Zimbabwe A or Kenya, or even Afghanistan (teams that generally have full access to their players) if their opponents (teams with a large County Championship contingent like Ireland, Scotland and The Netherlands esp) are fielding mainly sesond string players. It lowers the quality of the competition and therefore is misleading about the standard of the team's best are playing FC cricket. I think it is very good for Associates to play Zimbabwe/Zimbabwe A in this format of the game more often (perhaps Bangladesh could send in an A team too in due course) but its in nobody's benefit if say 8 of Irelands XI best opt to stay at their counties (with good reason)

Fri, 29/05/2009 - 10:27 — maehara

I agree that Namibia being

I agree that Namibia being 'demoted' to the second division after topping the table last time around is strange, to put it mildly. On the other hand, it was known well in advance that standings from the World Cup Qualifiers would be used to decide initial standings for the next running of the Intercontinental Cup, so Namibia can't say they weren't warned. No comment on how daft it is to use one-day form to determine participation in a four-day tournament...

As for Ireland and Scotland... They will play the best sides they can, and always do, but for any matches that take place during the English season they're both going to be missing county players. That's entirely outside their control - even though ICC rules required counties to release players for international matches, the counties can and do put a lot of pressure on their Associate players to make themselves unavailable for selection. "Sure you can go, but if your stand-in has a good run of form while you're away, well...." To be honest, though, the fact that Ireland can still win the tournament three times on the trot, with a side that is not the best they could field, says a lot about their standing and strengthens their case for a path to Full Membership to be laid out for them.