Tim Wigmore: 10-team World Cup not cricket

Australia, England and India prioritise short-term self-enrichment over a vision to expand the game - and leave everyone, themselves included, richer in the medium term. Photo / Getty

Opinion

If the International Cricket Council ran football, New Zealand would never have gotten anywhere near the 2010 World Cup. Allowing this motley bunch to compete against the world's best would be anathema to the mantra of David Richardson, the chief executive of the ICC, that "World Cups should be played between evenly matched teams".

Five years ago, the New Zealand football team was flattered by odds of 750-1 to win the World Cup, yet no one said they did not deserve their place in the tournament. But Richardson recently said the presence of four associate nations in the Cricket World Cup - the only teams to qualify, while all 10 test-playing nations get a guaranteed free pass - threatens to reduce the tournament to a "jamboree" rather than "the pinnacle of the one-day game".

This is the justification for the ICC's plans to reduce the size of the next World Cup to 10 teams, who will play each other in a marathon 45-game round robin.

The truth has nothing to do with competitiveness. Australia, England and India, the boards that control the decision-making arm of the ICC, prioritise short-term self-enrichment over a vision to expand the game - and leave everyone, themselves included, richer in the medium term.

"The thing the broadcasters loved was a 10-team event because India get nine matches guaranteed," admits a senior ICC source.

The shame is that such myopia is governing the decision-makers in Dubai at exactly the moment when cricket is showing signs of developing genuine depth. It was only in the mid-1990s that cricket's governing elite first became serious about growing the game: the Champions Trophy was created in 1998 with the intention of raising funds for cricket's frontiers, and the World Cup was expanded.

A generation later, the fruits of expansionism are clear to see. In 2001, Ireland finished eighth in the ICC Trophy - below Denmark and the United States - and, so amateur was their set-up, that they had to enlist a journalist as a substitute fielder. It was unthinkable that they would reach the stage where a World Cup victory over the West Indies was not even regarded as a surprise. Afghanistan, the other great associate standard-bearers, did not even play their first official game until 2004.

Scotland and the UAE are far improved from the sides who struggled in past tournaments; the Netherlands have beaten England in two World T20 tournaments; and the game has made extraordinary strides in Nepal and Papua New Guinea.

There is a reason why every other sport is expanding the size of their World Cup competitions: football has 32 teams, rugby 20, and even baseball has 16. Such an approach is in the best long-term commercial interests of sports, and provides insurance against the decline of traditional powers like the West Indies cricket team.

And in the short-term, allowing more teams to set piece tournaments enriches them by showcasing the breadth of the sport.

• Tim Wigmore is author of Second XI: Cricket in its Outposts.