At Old Hararians on Saturday, Papua New Guinea and Hong Kong were contesting the game's 4000th ODI. It proved to be the last either will play for at least four years.

Meanwhile, some 200 kilometers away, out of sight in little Kwekwe, the teams that beat them, the Netherlands and Nepal, were facing off in the 7th place play-off. Nepal secured their ODI status with their win over PNG, the Dutch won theirs over a three-year campaign starting at World Cricket League Division 2 in Namibia in January 2015 and culminating in Dubai in December last year, where they claimed the title of WCL Champions and the 13th spot in the coming Full Member ODI league.

The match will be List A.

Confused? You're not alone. The mixture of List A and ODI matches at this qualifier has raised a few eyebrows. Pundits have struggled to explain why the UAE vs Ireland carried full ODI status but the Windies against the Netherlands was only List A, even though when the two teams meet in the mooted ODI league in three year's time, the matches will be full ODIs regardless of what happens at this tournament - because of some matches the Dutch won between 2015 and last year, some of which by then will be half a decade in the past.

The ICC's own social media department seemed to struggle to keep things straight, congratulating Mohammed Nabi on picking up his 100th ODI wicket in a List A game against Nepal. Sky, meanwhile, were happily broadcasting a graphic showing Ryan ten Doeschate's ODI average creeping up as he batted against the Windies, and later on Fazeer Mohammad confidently explained on TV commentary that the Dutch had to beat Hong Kong to regain ODI status.

That Nepal should win their ODI status in such a remarkable campaign and yet be denied the chance to play their first ODI while the eyes of the world are on them (or at least on the live scorecard with their names on it) is a travesty. That the Dutch have been told their ODI status is on hold until the end of the tournament is such an arrant absurdity that I can safely leave it to others to ridicule.

Rules are rules, some will say, except of course when they aren't. The idea of status in Cricket may be well established, but the rules governing it are arbitrary and in seemingly constant flux. At the previous edition of tournament in 2014, the Netherlands and Canada were stripped of ODI status as soon as they failed to make the Super Six. Likewise the supposed immutability of the number of ODI sides - currently fixed at 16 - is also a recent innovation, being spoken of for the first time just ahead of this tournament.

There were briefly 14 ODI nations in 2014. In the past, there have been as few as six, as many as seventeen, and almost every number in between. That is before we even get into glorified charity matches featuring World XIs being accorded status. The idea that 16 is some magic number is patently absurd to anyone with a memory that reaches back a handful of years.

The current system, if it can be called that, for according matches or teams ODI status thus lacks both sanity and consistency. The very idea of basing status for a four-year period on a two-week tournament either decided during the four-match group stage, in a single play-off game, or even by net run rate, while these same teams have been competing against each other in a three-year-long league, which for many comprises the bulk of the 50-over international cricket that they have played in that time, is simply baffling.

It was in fact a net run rate difference of just 0.035 that cost the Netherlands their ODI status at the last edition of the tournament. The Dutch proceeded to make a mockery of this decision by winning practically every Associate tournament they played in for the next three years. This time around, the inclusion of full members whose status was secure broke the format such that PNG found themselves in a situation where they would have been better off losing to keep their hopes of ODI status alive.

The notional reasoning behind this policy is to ensure that any team qualifying for the World Cup has ODI status so that at least the nonsense of a multi-status tournament is not repeated on the biggest stage, yet again anyone with a functioning memory will recall that in the past World Cups, qualifying sides have simply been awarded temporary status for the duration.

When Ireland and Afghanistan were promoted to full membership, the number of Associate ODI nations was reduced to four. Keeping it at six would have extended it to both Nepal and the Netherlands ahead of this Qualifier. Even merely extending temporary ODI status to Nepal for the duration of the tournament, as has been done in the past, would have avoided the absurdity of today, lending the competition a degree of prestige rather than an air of farce, and at literally no financial cost whatsoever. As internet user Dave Tickner remarked on Twitter, "Cricket is literally sabotaging its own World Cup qualifying tournament because of some 19th century bullshit."

Cricket's anachronistic obsession with status is more or less unique in the sporting world. Certainly in no other sport is it so restrictively practised, nor so haphazardly. Football has no such hang-ups. In rugby, any international board can dub a match a test. For cricket, the recognition of "real" internationals is fiercely guarded by statisticians, lest a centuries-old body of data be contaminated.

The problem is, this supposed sanctity of statistics is a pious nonsense.

Deep down, everyone knows it. The ubiquity of phrases such as "just padding his average" and "ahh but uncovered pitches" or even the dread "declaration bowling" should tell you as much. A statistic in cricket is invariably the start of a discussion, not the end. And it's rarely even a particularly useful starting point, at least if we're talking traditional cricket statistics.

For a sport that supposedly revolves around stats, cricket still applies them comparatively crudely. In limited overs a batsman's strike rate - itself a relatively recent innovation - takes no account for the rate required, making no distinction between a match-winning 50 off 70 balls chasing a low total with the tail and a match-losing 50 off 70 on a flat track.

No account is taken for the conditions, for the match state, for the actual quality of opposition faced. For a bowler's statistics, no distinction is made, quite incredibly if you think about it, between the wicket of a batsman and a tail-ender.

Anyone would admit that the Netherlands' Ryan ten Doeschate or indeed Jersey's Jonty Jenner are better batsmen than, say, Steve Finn or Shannon Gabriel. Yet when you look at the stats, Finn's wicket is indistinguishable from that of Virat Kohli, but ten Doechate's doesn't count at all.

Any serious minded statistician will acknowledge that, in reality, stats are no more comparable across eras than they are across formats, that a batting average tells you at most part of the story, that all wickets are not alike. Yet when the Windies and Zimbabwe named second-string sides during player disputes, or Australia fielded two recognised international sides at once, or the ICC cobble together a World XI for a hit-and-giggle at Lord's so the West Indies could fix up their grounds, every run and wicket is duly entered into the record books, whilst the arbiters of "true internationals" devalue greater achievements on smaller stages.

Anshuman Rath, probably the most gifted young batsman in Associates cricket, played his last ODI, for at least four years, from today. His maiden ODI century came in December, smacking about a demoralised PNG attack around at Dubai to rack up an unbeaten 137 in the World Cricket League, and March 17 was his last chance to make another.

His maiden List A century came 10 months earlier in the same competition, marshaling a collapsing Hong Kong middle order in a mammoth chase against the eventual champions. It would be in vain in the end. Rath would fall to Michael Rippon - the Netherlands' leading wicket-taker, having struck 134 off 121 balls. He would watch the lower order fritter away the advantage and collapse five runs short.

A purist will tell you the former is worth more than the latter. I don't imagine Rath would.