We hate to be the ‘Minnows’…

In the cricketing terminology, we describe the non-test playing nations as ‘minnows’. They are the one who always get some opportunities to play with the test playing nations in some bigger tournaments like World cup, Asia cup etc. And also there are multiple instances of these teams creating upsets by defeating the stronger teams. This might not happen in the near future, as the ICC has already decided to have only 10 teams for the future World cup tournaments. The cricket pundits all over the world expressed their views for and against this decision by ICC. Personally I always liked more number of teams taking part in the events like World cup. But I stood with point that all the teams taking part in such events must have the fire to win the title. This may well be one of the reasons for ICC to make the decision to have only the top 10 teams playing for the championship title. Where top 8 ranked teams will automatically make into the grand stage and the associate nations so called ‘minnows’ will battle it out with the 9th and 10th ranked team for the last two spots. So, is this the end of the cricketing highway for these nations? The dream of becoming another South Africa or a Sri Lanka can’t it be turned into reality? Should they still continue playing cricket as ‘Minnows’? ICC has already taken a few steps to develop the game in the associate nations which includes Nepal, Malaysia, Canada, Namibia, Afghanistan, China, Papua New Guinea etc. But whenever they come face to face even with some of the lower ranked teams, we can see the huge gap between the team’s mindset to win matches. So ICC seriously has to think to make them complete with the higher ranked teams. If they win against the stronger teams, we must not term it as an ‘upset’. Here are some initiatives which might help those associate nations to be more competitive. • Encourage school cricket in the form of U-11, U-14, and U-19 tournaments to build the game from the grass root level.
• Conduct private league matches encouraging youths of the country. For this, they have to appoint some of the popular players like Brian Lara, Muralitharan, Warne, Rahul Dravid, Sachin Tendulkar etc. and help in the growth of popularity of the sport.
• Have some invitational tournaments involving a few associate nations and include handful of some country teams to be a part of the same.
• Make them travel do different parts of the world and play a series with ‘A’ teams and occasionally with the main teams.
• Encourage the players to play at English county and improve their individual cricketing skills.
• Allow the bigger teams to have a few tours to these countries.
• Make these teams to play at least 45-50 matches per year, except the World Cup games, where 60% of them must be against the better test playing teams.