The ICC decision taken earlier this year to award T20I status to all 104 ICC members was a catalyst for decisions taken this past week at the ICC meeting in Singapore regarding the restructure of the 2023 Men's World Cup pathway and the future of the Intercontinental Cup, the four-day competition for Associates that helped pave the way toward Test status for Ireland and Afghanistan.

According to ICC head of global development Will Glenwright, the game's governing body is taking a more flexible view towards individual member wants and needs in order to give each country the ability to customize their development and high performance programme participation aims rather than the ICC force-feeding a one size fits all structure. Glenwright recently told ESPNcricinfo in an exclusive interview that the willingness to relax stringent facility demands is crucial not only to grow the game within the ICC's model, but may also help with a push towards future inclusion in the Olympics.

"We're an international federation. It's an international sport. Regardless of whether a match is played between England and South Africa or Fiji and Vanuatu, it's international cricket and should be recognized as such," Glenwright told ESPNcricinfo. "If we're serious about expanding the game internationally and taking it to new countries, then we need to make it easy for these new countries to not just compete in but be able to host major international events."

The ICC announced on Saturday that it had redesigned its 2023 Men's World Cup pathway structure, which includes ODI status for 20 teams instead of 16 and List A status all the way down to the former WCL Division Five in what will now be called the Cricket World Cup Challenge League. Most countries have turf wicket facilities, but a few likely participants - including Vanuatu and Italy - do not. It's something that would have been an impediment in the past to hosting international cricket but Glenwright says that is likely to change for T20Is and possibly other formats too.

"Our expectation under the new competition program, and particularly with T20I status being awarded to all members, there's going to be an explosion of international cricket that's going on across our members and we probably need to be a little less precious around the requirements that we have to host those matches," Glenwright said. "One of the big challenges that we look at as we are growing the game and growing participation at both grassroots and international level is access to facilities.

"There's no point providing T20I status to all Associate members if we still make it impossible for them to participate in T20I cricket [due to facility regulations]. We are finalizing the standards of play but they are going to be scaled right back for the non-ODI status members. What we are working towards is the playing of T20I cricket on artificial surfaces. So long as both members agree to play on a particular surface or pitch, it'll be sanctioned as a T20I match and recognized as such.

"Not only for financial but for marketing reasons, if USA Cricket want to take a game to New York because that's seen as a hub that they want to develop and they want to play a T20I there against whomever, they should be allowed to do that [on an artificial wicket] and that's absolutely what we're working towards. There's no point having T20I status if Fiji and Vanuatu have to fly to Brisbane to play that game. It's got to be played within the countries."

Another significant aspect of the redesigned World Cup pathway announced on Saturday was that it provides greater clarity for each country regarding their program structures over a longer period. In the World Cricket League tournament structure that has been in place since 2007 for Associates, a good week could see a country's fortunes improve quickly as was the case with Afghanistan, who started in WCL Division Five in May 2008 and secured three straight tournament promotions resulting in ODI status by April 2009.

But one bad week resulting in relegation could leave a country's future development via lack of fixtures and funding in limbo. Even though it made for exciting drama from an on-field perspective, it left countries in unstable positions in both the short and long term, something that is addressed by the new structure which may make it easier to contract full-time players and staff as well as secure long-term sponsors.

"It's no good being in a situation where for example, [UAE coach] Dougie Brown's famous quote that he was more stressed at the WCL 2 tournament than he was at the World Cup Qualifier because the livelihood of his staff and some of his players was directly reliant on one or two performances at that tournament," Glenwright said. "That's not a good situation to be in and we have to smooth out that volatility.

"The better model is one whereby funding is locked in over a 2-4 year period, regardless of performance in international competitions, that allows them to engage high performance staff on longer term contracts, players if they are going to contract their players and just putting in place tour schedules that they can lock into with certainty."

As for the Intercontinental Cup, Glenwright said after the ICC meeting outcomes were announced on Saturday that "expressions of interest" were being solicited from countries who want to participate in the next edition of the ICC's four-day first-class tournament for Associates. The ICC had announced in 2014 that the winner of the 2015-17 Intercontinental Cup would go into a Test Challenge with the lowest ranked Full Member for a shot at provisional Test status, but that was made redundant when tournament champion Afghanistan and runner-up Ireland gained Full Membership at the ICC annual conference in June 2017.

Considering the fact that few if any Associate countries have a domestic multi-day cricket competition, the ICC position is that they do not want to force I-Cup participation on countries who may not have the infrastructure to accommodate it. However, for a country like Scotland, who has publicly stated a desire to acquire Test status, the door is ostensibly still open to play a higher standard as it was for four-time I-Cup winners Ireland and two-time I-Cup winners Afghanistan.

"We don't know exactly what it looks like yet but what we do know is that we are absolutely committed to the I-Cup and long-form cricket," Glenwright said. "If Nepal or any member for that matter, say Oman as another one, want to invest and participate in multi-day or long-form cricket, then our commitment is to create a competition structure that allows them to do that.

"Netherlands is a classic case and, not that I know this for a fact, but if that hypothetical situation was to arise where they're our 13th ODI team but they make a decision where they don't want to participate in the I-Cup, we're not going to force them to participate in an I-Cup just on account of the fact that they're the 13th ODI team. So the participatory makeup of an I-Cup may be very different to [World Cup Qualifying]. It's more around creating the bespoke but effective and sustainable competition structures for those members that want to participate in that particular format."