Cutting back to 10 nations next World Cup.

[Lightning McQueen]

This is my idea posted on the Quarter-finals thread

This is why the current format is so ridiculous.
Strong teams play meaningless games against weak opposition, then suddenly the quarter finals are single knock-out games where a small amount of luck or weather can influence the result.

My format would be:
Ten teams in 2 Groups, play each other in a Round-Robin.
Top four teams are automatically through, ranked as per there results, run rates etc.
Fifth team through is the best performing 3rd ranked team.
Play a final five like the footy. This means the lower 2nd ranked team straight away faces a knock-out against the better perfornming third ranked team.
The two Grand Finalists play a best-of three.
Most amount of games a team can play is 12, if they come from the "Elimination" and play the GF goes to best of three.

Bottom two or three teams have to play the top two or three teams from the Associates World Cup in a round-robin, for the right to play in the next World Cup

This may only leave room for one minnow, depending on how you class Bangladesh and Zimbabwe, so could extend it to twelve teams in two groups of six round-robin.

Fair enough Striker, my point is that we talk about meaningless games in a World Cup, Australia going to Bangladesh for 3 one-dayers to flex their muscles , you don't get any more meaningless than that, surely.
Will we experiment? I doubt it.
Will we blood some youth? I doubt it.
Will we think we're back if we pants them? Probably.
Will this tour prove anything? No.

[Brucetiki]

Shocking call. Yes the minnows should be scaled back, but I think a 12 team tournament would have been ideal, allowing 2 of the associate nations to participate.

What's worse is that it sounds like the next world cup will be a 1 pool league again (like 1992), which will mean even more pointless pool games anway.

How can you call them pointless games? I'm sure if the Crows didn't play Gold Coast or Brisbane during the season SA would be up in arms. All participating teams deserve the right to play everyone else to determine the right to play in finals.

The problem with the league set up is if a side like Zimbabwe ends up at say 0-5 or 0-6 and Bangladesh end up 1-4 or 1-5, then you're still looking at a string of pointless matches anyway as neither side would be able to make the finals.

[Adelaide Hawk]

The ICC should be reminded that there was a time, and relatively not all that long ago, that crickert nations such as India and Sri Lanka were minnows of world cricket, and have only attained their current status courtesy of continued competition with the stronger cricket nations.

Once again the ICC demonstrate they really couldn't care less about the development of cricket on a global scale.

[spell_check]

Time to link this again. Ireland are far better than Zimbabwe, but the ICC seem to love Zimbabwe so much (they did not exclude them from Test matches, Zimbabwe themselves did) they want them there.

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[FlyingHigh]

This is my idea posted on the Quarter-finals thread

This is why the current format is so ridiculous.
Strong teams play meaningless games against weak opposition, then suddenly the quarter finals are single knock-out games where a small amount of luck or weather can influence the result.

My format would be:
Ten teams in 2 Groups, play each other in a Round-Robin.
Top four teams are automatically through, ranked as per there results, run rates etc.
Fifth team through is the best performing 3rd ranked team.
Play a final five like the footy. This means the lower 2nd ranked team straight away faces a knock-out against the better perfornming third ranked team.
The two Grand Finalists play a best-of three.
Most amount of games a team can play is 12, if they come from the "Elimination" and play the GF goes to best of three.

Bottom two or three teams have to play the top two or three teams from the Associates World Cup in a round-robin, for the right to play in the next World Cup

This may only leave room for one minnow, depending on how you class Bangladesh and Zimbabwe, so could extend it to twelve teams in two groups of six round-robin.

Fair enough Striker, my point is that we talk about meaningless games in a World Cup, Australia going to Bangladesh for 3 one-dayers to flex their muscles , you don't get any more meaningless than that, surely.
Will we experiment? I doubt it.
Will we blood some youth? I doubt it.
Will we think we're back if we pants them? Probably.
Will this tour prove anything? No.

Agree that this tournament is not proving much, and if anything partly devalues the World Cup by being just a week after it. Imagine if Austrlalia had have won, and now had to front up to this 7 days later.
However, under the current set-up half the teams are virtually also-rans before the tournament has started. Three or four minnows is enough

[smac]

Terrible decision by ICC to invite Zimbabwe instead of Ireland to the next World Cup, let's keep looking after the countries who are endeavouring to improve, please!

[brod]

Why would teams be getting invited now...a lot can happen in four years, just ask the Power and WC Eagles

[brod]

Ireland captain William Porterfield has described the ICC's decision to trim the next World Cup to just the ten countries as "an absolute joke". The ICC, in its executive board meeting in Mumbai on Monday, decided to restrict the 2015 World Cup to its 10 full-member nations, thereby denying Associate countries like Ireland and Netherlands the chance to qualify on the basis of their position in the ICC one-day rankings or by a qualification tournament.
Monday's decision means that that the Associates and Affiliates have been effectively shunted out of cricket's showpiece event for the next eight years.
"We are currently ranked 10th, ahead of Zimbabwe, and there is no reason we can't move up another position, if not two, by the next World Cup," Porterfield said. "Instead, the door has been closed in our face. It is an embarrassment.