Dear Tony:

If only the World League idea were true! It would certainly be great for cricket development. My obvious doubt is that it would be very costly to individual players. Even if it's an April Fool it's a pretty good idea, if some kind of ICC subsidy for participation could be worked out.

Mark Kidger
Tenerife, Spain

Regarding the "World League" idea, personally, I do not believe it is such a bad idea.

Of course you raise the correct remark that a few levels down, this turns into an economical nightmare.

But that does not need to happen, if the lower levels are constructed on a geographical basis.

Let me explain by using the number six as a continuation. After all, it is a good number. Five playing days is a nice competition.

At the top level, it is quite easy to organize two groups of six. Maybe even letting a biannual 12-team tournament take over from the current ICC trophy.

The twelfth team obviously being the winner of the previous tournament for the top group of associates. Let's say that this is currently the Netherlands.

Then it is very easy to organize a tournament for the second group, on current form consisting of, say, Scotland, Bermuda, Canada, Ireland, Namibia and Denmark.

The third group consists of some lesser lights, but these should still be able to organise one biannual tournament: Uganda, Hong Kong, Cayman Isls, United Arab E, Malaysia, USA.

(I have used my world rankings as a measure for placing the teams). Now it becomes necessary to introduce two separate groups, for example a western group with Botswana, West Africa, Zambia, Norway, Germany and Gibraltar, and an eastern one of Italy, Fiji, Papua NG, Singapore, Maldives and Kuwait.

Below that, I can quite well envisage 4 groups by region.

I don't think that at any time do you need to send Estonia to the Pacific.

Many sports have similar systems and so I believe the idea is not bad at all. It is certaily a lot more feasible than the current idea of sending 24 countries to Canada and then not even allowing some of them to compete for the top prize.

Herman DE WAEL
Antwerpen Belgium
http://www.gallery.uunet.be/hermandw/index.html

Dear Tony,

Quite correctly, you have pointed out in the last issue the ludicrous proposal of a World League, something that if it was not serious would induce us all to laugh rather than cry.

Here is a sport that cannot even organize properly the ICC Trophy which qualifies countries for the World Cup, namely our premierč event, and now on the basis of the rankings of this 3rd millenium revisitation of "ius primae noctis" we are considering flying part time cricketers across the globe to play second, third and fourth division games !

As always in life, or nearly so, the truth is simple. This does not mean it is pleasant. But kidding oneself is not going to make things better. Quite the contrary.

Now that ICC has struck a professional partnership with WSG, we can stop looking at countries like Full, Associate & Affiliate Members and more simply call them professional, semiprofessional and amateur. It hurts to say, but not even all the Full Members are fully professional and definitely no one outside these is even semiprofessional.

Yet rather than taking advantage of this six year bonanza offered to us all by WSG to do the only thing that can help us grow globally, improving our structures be it technical, admninistrative or whatever, here we are suggesting this merry go round which is destined to flop even before it has started.

What some people refuse to understand is that the diversity of cricket was a great thing until we were all happy to keep it as the last flag of Queen Victoria's Empire. However, if we really want it to be a global sport, we have to adapt to the laws of the market in which anything out of place, out of order and mostly "out of budget" gets axed.

You quote a source saying the World League proposal was also fuelled by fear from cricket officialdom that World Sports Group would not renew its contract with the ICC once the present agreement expires if the game had not proven its global credentials.

If ever we decided to foster a competition for the "upside down statement" of the two millenium's, this would dwarf the others by Bradmanian proportions.

Limited as it may be, the regional infrastructure that has slowly and painfuly been put in motion by ICC over the last four years, has produced substantial results. Certainly, we have discovered unpleasant truths. Some regions develop quicker than others in most cases because they are logistically at a huge advantage, Europe vs South East Pacific being the most prominent example. However, all this has been achieved by ICC through its own strength and should the WSG agreement not be renewed after 2007 and no global broadcaster suddenly be interested in cricket, something slight unlikely, there is no risk of falling back in the development process.

Perversely, if we followed your source's inspiration what would happen. A tournament with Holland, Canada, Namibia, Fiji and Malaysia would be marketable to anyone globally, regionally or even parishwise ? I doubt it. Amateur players would have to take time off work, boards fork out unpaid leave compensation and a spiral of disaster and embarassment would follow. After all did we not have something vaguely similar last year called "Emerging Nations Tournmament" in the context of that most popular initiative Cricket Week?

The result: the ENT has been put on ice and Cricket Week 2001 has already reached its third postponment.

Allow me, Tony, to close this note on a spontaneous thought, maybe not of the best taste. The story of this World League reminds me of those married couples who seeing the relationship grow stale decide to attempt something new. Stories of middle aged men in leopard skins breaking some bone when mistiming a jump from the top of the cupboard on to something soft make the joy of the tabloids and of all their readers.

Unfortunately, the story of the cricket World League can only cause trouble to all the minor cricketing confraternity.

Ciao,

Simone Gambino
Rome,
Italy

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