Associates should have had six teams in World Twenty20

The International Cricket Council’s (ICC) decision to reduce the number of Associates in  the next two World Twenty20 tournaments is a big letdown for developing countries such as Bermuda.

This according to Martin Vieira, ICC development programme manager for the Americas region, who would prefer to see more Associate countries competing in the World Twenty20.

He said: “Personally, my choice would’ve been six Associates in the World Twenty20.

“The main focus in cricket in the future for developing countries, in my opinion, is definitely Twenty20; the attraction to the fans and duration of the game which allows games to be played maybe in the evening time - particularly in North America where there is a potential large market.

“When you look at the analysis of what competitions are played in the region, Twenty20 is the game of the new affiliates within the region. It’s no doubt that Twenty20 is going to become a very popular game in the future, and hopefully we can get more spaces in the World Twenty20.”

During the ICC’s recent annual conference in Hong Kong, attended by Bermuda Cricket Board CEO Neil Speight and vice-president Allen Richardson, the decision was made to reduce the number of Associates at the 2012 and 2014 World Twenty20 tournaments from six to two.

In the lead up to the highly publicized event Vieira had hoped for the complete opposite.

He said: “Our expectations were high that this would be the area where developing countries would have more exposure and we were hoping for at least six places.

“I guess with the reversing of the ICC World Cup, as the CEO (Haroon Lorgat) explained it, it became a financial situation where both could not be done this time around and hopefully that will be reviewed in the future.

“Going back to the additional teams (four Associates) in the ICC World Cup obviously has to put a financial strain on the overall budget, and therefore there’s a reason for saying ‘at least this time out let’s keep it to two teams’.

“But hopefully we can find a way to resolve this and increase and maybe the popularity of Twenty20 will force the decision makers to revisit the number of countries that go into the World Twenty20 in the future.”

Qualifiers

Bermuda is currently involved in regional 2012 World Twenty20 qualifiers in Florida, where the eventual top two teams plus Canada will advance to next year’s global qualifiers in the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

Canada is among the six ICC Associates with One-Day International (ODI) status that automatically qualified for next year’s global World Twenty20 qualifiers in UAE.

They are to be joined by ten other Associates from five regions whowill advance from their respective regional qualifiers.

The eventual top two Associates at the global qualifying event in UAE will compete against the ten Test-playing nations at the 2012 World Twenty20 in Sri Lanka.