 The ICC executive committee met on Monday, April 4, a couple of days after the end of the World Cup to decide on the future of the World Cup cricket and
decided that there will only be ten teams that will play in the tournament.
What adds fuel to fire is that the ten teams will go through no qualifying process
and will see the ten Test-playing nations participate in it - a repeat of what
had happened in the 1992 World Cup where there were nine teams which had participated
in the tournament.
The 2015 edition of World Cup will be co-hosted by Australia and New Zealand.
According to the CEO of the ICC, Haroon Lorgat, the format of the tournament
will see each side playing against each other and hence, 45 league games being
played apart from two semi-finals and a final.
The ICC also announced that there will be qualifiers held for the 2019 edition
of the tournament, where there will be ten teams but which will be decided by
the qualifiers.
Lorgat also said that the format design wasn't yet made but they will work towards
having a more relevant one, where the sides will be expected to play all the other
teams in a round-robin game.
In the 2011 edition of the tournament, there were 14 sides, which were divided
into two groups of seven teams each. The top four teams from each group proceeded
to play in the quarter-finals, followed by the semi-finals and the final.
There were a total of 49 games being played in the competition.
The latest decision to have only 10 teams in the World Cup means that the ones
like Ireland will be affected the most. Ireland had an excellent tournament, despite
being a minnow, when they beat both England and Netherlands and came close
to overcoming Bangladesh as well, in the league stage.
In place of that, there will be 16 teams which will participate in the ICC World
T20, the World Cup for the T20 format. There have been three editions of the tournament
that have been played so far and 12 teams have participated in each of them. Now,
there will be 16.
It was also announced that there will be a qualifier held for the 2019 edition
of the World Cup that will be played in England.
Ireland has been understandably gutted by the move and have been vocal about the
same.
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