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Giving
a Global Outlook for Cricket
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- Venkat
With the ICC Under-19 Cricket World Cup in Bangladesh emerging a huge success with teams from all four corners of the world narrowing in, the emergence of cricket as a global sport is getting underway. It was great to see the sport being played in countries like Uganda, Papua New Guinea, Nepal etc.
Although performance will be still an eluding factor that distinguishes these associate and affiliate nations from the top draw teams, whatever they do on the cricket field will be taken in positively as a drop of confidence, towards spreading the game nationwide. But again, ICC has to play a better and important role towards the performance of these teams. As endorsed by Bob Woolmer, the ICC High Level Performance Manager, the lesser cricket nations have to be given exposure as they are only to gain more than lose and more importantly grab their chances with both hands.
An ODI Status team like Kenya not only surprised everybody, but inspired the cricketing world, as to how a supposedly developing nation in cricket must have all it takes to beat a test nation in them. They may have been lucky, as many might say...but they were also worthy of it !
As cricket spreads its wings to countries beyond the international spectrum like Argentina, Brazil, Papua New Guinea, Uganda...persistence by the ICC with these relatively newer nations is important as it'll benefit them in the long run ! It is really great to see the United States of America side, led by West Indian veteran Clayton Lambert, make it to the ICC Champions Trophy 2004, by edging out Scotland. Cricket needs to be popularized in that country to try to compete with popular yank sports like Baseball, Basketball...although it seems quite long before it can get as close as that ! But, its great to see the initial step taken by the ICC to promote the cricketing welfare of these nations, but the challenge before them will be to give the finishing touch as they did with Bangladesh, who now are a full fledged "test nation" !
This edition of the Asia Cup promises a new entrant as well - Nepal and the winner of the ACC Trophy - where sides like Afghanistan, Bahrain, Iran and Saudi will compete for glory among lesser Asian nations.
I think, its time for the ICC to choose appropriate measures of funding to its member nations (associates and affiliates) to enable proper administration of the game in that country. It was disheartening to see how Kenya got the same amount of money from the World Cup as what Netherlands and Canada did, and Bangladesh, who were worse than the lesser nations getting the same amount as what may be an India or a South Africa would do. I would like the ICC to take note of the fact that Performance Based Funding encourages more than Status Based Funding.
I think we as fans of the game must encourage this step forward that cricket is taking, to establish its foothold as a global sport. It is very important for us to support the game in every way possible to elevate its status to where a game like soccer is today !
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