 The five-day long yearly conference that the ICC holds will be held at Hong Kong this year. It will begin from Sunday and the main decision to be taken
will be associated with the Decision Review System (DRS). For now, almost
all the cricket board support the decision review system but there is opposition
from the BCCI. This means that there will be a decision to be taken whether the
usage of DRS could be made mandatory.
According to the ICC chief, Haroon Lorgat, the ICC wanted to use the DRS across
all the formats of the game and were very happy with the results that the system
had shown.
The other main discussions that will happen over this five-day period is to do
with the changes associated with ODI cricket to make it more attractive to the
viewers. There will also be a discussion around making it stricter fines for the
issues associated with slower over-rates and changes around allowing runners in
case of injuries.
However, one of the biggest issues that will be discussed in the meeting will
be around the number of teams that will play in the next edition of the World
Cup and the format around the same. Earlier, it had been said that there would
be 10 teams in the tournament with only the Test-playing nations featuring in
the tournament. however, after intervention by the President of the ICC, Sharad Pawar, it has been decided that things may be changed around.
According to the latest news, what had been proposed was to have a qualifier before
the World Cup, which will have some of the teams from the bottom of the Test-rankings
and some of the top Associate nations.
In the 2011 edition of the World Cup, there were 14 teams, which were divided
into two groups of seven each. However, it was being said that the first round
matches were, in fact, glorified warm-ups alone and the top eight sides managed
to qualify for the quarter-final in the end.
Lorgat also said that there will be discussion around trying to have cricket boards
which will not be influenced by ay government control, such that there can be
free elections to decide the course of action. He said that there was a need to
have free elections.
The Pakistan board is said to oppose this because their board President is elected by the President of the country.
|
