OUTSIDE THE CIRCLE

USA and Oman a step closer to a place in the new order

by Bertus de Jong • Last updated on

Oman, hosting their first WCL tournament, had secured promotion with a hard-fought win over the States © Getty

Oman and the USA's promotion from World Cricket League Division 3 this week took them a step closer to ODI status and a berth in CWC League 2, the premiere Associate 50-over competition in the ICC's newly-announced structure for World Cup qualifying, of which further details emerged in the last week. Yet, their success also illustrates the effects of less remarked-upon changes to the game beyond the top-flight.

For the United States, who secured the Division 3 runners-up spot with a convincing win over Singapore at Al-Amarat today, promotion to Division 2 is their best result yet in the World Cricket League - the ladder of divisional tournaments that has provided the structure for Associate 50-over cricket for the past decade. After missing promotion in the four preceding editions of Division 3, the USA will join Division 3 champions Oman in Namibia next April for Division 2, together with Papua New Guinea, Hong Kong, Namibia and Canada, to contest the last ever WCL tournament. The top four teams at that tourney will be rewarded with ODI status for the next cycle and a place in League 2, guaranteeing a total of 36 ODIs over the course of 2.5 years.

Oman, hosting their first WCL tournament, had secured promotion on Friday (November 16) with a hard-fought win over the States before capping off a perfect run in the tournament with a crushing 10-wicket demolition of Uganda the following day. The hosts had taken charge on the first day of competition with a comfortable opening win over Kenya, and indeed the very first over of the tournament set the tone for things to come as eventual player-of-the-tournament Bilal Khan stuck with his fifth ball to remove Alex Obanda, clean bowled for a duck. The Omani pace attack would continue make full use of the swinging Dukes ball that was being trialled at the tournament, Khan eventually finishing top of the wicket-takers' table with 12 at 12.33.

For Kenya, who arrived in Oman under a cloud of administrative controversy, the tournament would mark yet another nadir, sinking to a 158-run defeat to the USA in their next match and eventually finishing fourth, a historic low for a team once ranked 11th in the World. For there neighbours Uganda, previously a regular participants in Division 2, the story was little better, an opening win over Denmark brought their only points as they ended up bottom of the pile, their woes compounded by the suspension of leg-spinner Irfan Afridi, who was taken out of the attack on the instruction of the umpires during Uganda's match against the USA and later found to have an illegal action.

The Danes themselves managed a consolation win over Kenya in their final match on the back of a fine century from skipper and tournament top-scorer Hamid Shah, but like Kenya and Uganda will have to content themselves with 15 List A fixtures in the new Challenge League for the coming cycle, as will Singapore, whose attempts to overhaul the Americans' considerable net run rate advantage faltered after a promising start in their final game.

The varying fortunes of different countries has long been one of the more attractive features of the WCL of course, where past glories have never provided any lasting sinecure of the sort enjoyed by the ICC's full members. Yet the recent success of sides like Oman, and especially the United States, does shed a rather uncomfortable light on a trend in associates cricket that many would prefer to ignore, namely the decline of sides such as Kenya or Denmark whose teams are drawn from a small but established domestic cricketing community, eclipsed by sides made up largely of recent arrivals or even players with little more than a passport connecting them to the country they represent.

The recent success of sides like Oman and the United States does shed a rather uncomfortable light on a trend in associates cricket that many would prefer to ignore ©Cricbuzz

Of the fourteen players in the Oman squad, only Sufyaan Mehmood and Jatinder Singh are the products of the Omani youth system. For the United States only Steven Taylor and late addition Nisarg Patel have represented the country at age-group level, and only a handful of players have lived in the US for more than a few years. Even at home the selection of Aaron Jones and Hayden Walsh Jr. (who had turned out for Barbados against the USA the previous week) provoked no small controversy, prompting ICC Americas' USA project manager Eric Parthen to make a public statement defending the selection process. Such "diaspora" and newly-naturalised players are of course hardly new in associates (nor indeed full member) cricket, some of the Associate game's most celebrated names - such as the Netherlands' Ryan ten Doeschate or Ireland's Trent Johnston - learned their cricket abroad, but their influence and numbers have generally been limited. What is striking about the results at this and other recent WCL tournaments is the dominance of teams with barely any "home-grown" players, with more "domestic" sides struggling to compete (figure 1).

The development can be attributed at least in part by the abolition last year of the ICC's Development Criteria for eligibility that had previously applied to WCL Divisions 2 and below, which has opened the door to greater numbers of so-called "passport players" and 3-year residents, and will likely be exacerbated by the recent reported adjustments to the ICC's funding scorecard for Associates, which appear to be de-emphasising the make-up of national teams in favour of raw participation numbers based on the (notoriously unreliable) ICC census.

The easing of the limit on passport-holders based abroad and players qualifying on comparatively short-term residence will inevitably favour countries with liberal nationality laws or high immigration from cricket-playing countries over countries with limited immigration or those, such as Denmark, which are stingier with passports. The scorecard's new emphasis on raw participation numbers over the proportion of domestically produced players in the national side further compounds the issue, imposing a permanent disadvantage on less populous countries such as Namibia or Vanuatu, and especially those like Hong Kong or the Channel Islands where the dollar doesn't stretch too far.

Whether the ICC is in fact free to impose whatever eligibility rules they wish is open to question however, with some speculating that the scrapping of the development criteria was prompted by a ruling by the Dispute Resolution Committee in favour of the Philippines Cricket Association, who had challenged the ICC's move to declare two Australian-based players ineligible ahead of the EAP WCL Qualifier early last year. Though the ICC has denied any direct connection to the case, stating only that the development criteria were no longer felt to be relevant, it is likely that almost any conceivable eligibility system designed to favour domestically produced players will be open to legal challenge. The apparent changes to the scorecard grant are less explicable however, especially if such financial incentives are indeed the only tool left to encourage the prioritisation of local player-development over imported talent.

It's hardly reasonable to expect Associates to police themselves in this regard, to pick anyone but the best eligible players will inevitably stink of politics and favouritism at best, xenophobia at worst. Given the immense pressure on Associate sides to perform on the field where future fixtures, performance funding, and by extension jobs are on the line, picking the anything but strongest side possible within the rules would be tantamount to negligence on the part of selectors.

Though the new league structure was designed in part to be competitively "less punitive", providing a degree of security to those that qualify, potential consequences for failure on the field remain far more immediate for Associates than for Full Members. Though a hastily-retracted "CWC League FAQ" document published and then taken down by the ICC last week suggested that Full Members might not be immune to relegation from the top division - stating that the team finishing 13th in the "Super League" would be relegated to League 2 should they finish below the League 2 Champions at the following World Cup Qualifier - such a risk, even if confirmed, would hardly imply financial disaster for a relegated full member, whose ICC funding is guaranteed by status rather than performance. Indeed the possibility of full member relegation would arguably place still greater pressure on the Netherlands (who would stand to secure their place in the next edition by finishing 12th or higher) to reverse their policy of bringing more Dutch-produced players into the senior team, especially given the lack of any financial incentive to do so.

The comparative stability in the medium-term provided by the new league structures should go some way toward alleviating these competitive pressures, or rather will do so once it's clear who makes the final cut. For those already on the outside the top flight though, or those that find themselves there come April, the climb (back) to the top looks a lot harder. Teams can hardly be blamed for using every tool at their disposal to get there, even as changes to rules are increasingly de-coupling success on the field from domestic player development. At the end of the day it's the job of any team to win games of cricket, and the job of any panel of selectors to pick the team that they think most likely to do so. It comes down to the rule-makers to ensure that the attitude of "win at all costs" does not cost the game too much.

© Cricbuzz

TAGS