How many teams should be there in the Cricket World Cup (2015)

How many teams should play the cricket world cup? What should be the format of cricket world cup? Do the minnows gain anything from playing in the World Cup? Should cricket be worried about mismatches when other sports don't seem to worry about it?

These are the many question that come into mind when anyone thinks of the format of Cricket World Cup. Where should cricket look upto and work on the format. So many formats have been tried but the perfect solution doesn't seem to be there. Since 1992 World Cup there have been a different format for each world cup starting from a 9 nation 1992 WC, reaching a peak in 2007 with 16 teams and then reducing by 2 teams to 14 in 2011 WC. Now the most disgusting thing is being discussed - the 10 Nation World Cup. Not only does it sound disgusting, it is against the whole concept of ICC working on expansion of the game.

To look for the right number of teams in the World Cup (First we decide on Number of Teams and then format will be based on number of teams). The sports I have picked up are all field sports with large field sizes so that helps in normalizing many factors. The sports picked are- Football, Baseball, Hockey and Rugby.

The strength of each sport and its spread can be determined by number of countries that have won the world cup and number of teams that have reached the semifinals. Based on these ratio I will work the whole calculations.

But before going ahead with the calculations we should remember these formats

• Cricket World Cup matches takes much higher amount of Time hence we have to go little conservative
• There are 3 formats of Cricket-ODI, T20 and Tests
• The other 2 formats also have / will have a World Championship - ICC World T20 & soon to come Test Championship
• For the T20 we show match the most aggressive sport
• For Test Championship, since more time, less chance of any upsets we simply should be very conservative in number of teams

Working on the number of teams in world cup and number of winners and semifinalist the following table has

been prepared

Game	WC  Size	Top 4   Finisher	Winners	Finalist	Semi Finalists	WC Size to Winner Ratio	WC Size to Top 4 Finishers Ratio	CWC  Size	CWC  Size
Football	32	24	8	4	12	4	1.33	20	12
Rugby	20	8	4	1	3	5	2.50	25	23
Baseball	16	16	8	5	3	2	1.00	10	9
Hockey	12	11	5	2	4	2.4	1.09	12	10
Cricket		9	5	1	3

 The 3rd column shows the present number of teams in the World Cup.The 4th Column shows the number of countries that finished in Top 4 or the Semi Finalists and next column shows number of countries that have won the world cup

It is known football or soccer is the most popular gamer around the world. As we can see from the table it is quite competitive. Though just 8 teams have won the world cup but 24 teams have reached the top 4. It shows it is not a closely guarded game in some nations rather very global.

While the other games are quite limited to some countries. Rugby has 8 teams which made to Semi Finals and 4 have won the cup. So as compared to football which has a ratio of 3:1 for Semi Finalists to Winner, the other games have a ratio of around 2. Cricket has even worse a ratio of 1.8.

Now we see the ratio of Total Teams in the World Cup to the total winner. Here we see Rugby is really aggressive. It has the highest ratio of 5:1. This is evident from the fact that Rugby has been very aggressive to expand into new countries. Hence the same format. This same aggressiveness should be used by the T20 format of Cricket. This means T20 should have 25 Teams

While Rugby is really aggressive we can see that Baseball and Hockey which presently are really not bullish about expanding into new markets have very conservative world cups. Baseball while is limited to few countries with huge GDP's like USA, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and China, hence feels no need to expand and on other hand Hockey is trying to save the game even in its traditional nations. Test Cricket should also follow such a conservative approach since it is highly technical hence the number of teams come out at 10 to 12. Since Test Cricket is 5 days in length, I would even reduce the number of teams for Test Championship to 5 to 6 Teams only.

Football is a established game however follows a middle path. It is neither conservative and nor too aggressive. It has a ratio of 4. Following this approach Cricket World Cup should have 20 teams

But but but, in soccer we have 24 Semi Finalists and 8 Winners a ratio of 4 where as in Cricket we have that Ratio of 1.8. Plus the length of football game is 2 Hrs while Cricket is 8 Hrs. Hence we cannot simply copy paste the approach. A look at number of teams in the World Cup to the number of Semi Finalists and applying the same ratio to cricket, we get number of teams in World Cup as 12. I would rather pick up this number as it would reflect the ideal number of teams. A middle path can also be taken which throws 16 teams since we want expansion based on 50 over World Cup too.

Based on second approach Rugby throws a number of number of teams as 23 (As compared to 25 in previous approach), hence for T20 world cup being aggressive we can have the number of teams as 24

Similarly on second approach in Baseball and Hockey throws the number of teams as 9 or 10 which is similar to last approach. Again the length of each game matter. We should reduce the number of teams to 4 to 6

Hence based on this analysis I would put up the number of teams for World Cup as follows

1. ICC Cricket World Cup:- 16 Teams
2. ICC World T20:- 24 Teams
3. ICC Test Championship:- 4 to 6 Teams

Hence Mr Haroon Lorgat, kindly do not keep the 2015 World Cup as a 10 nation. It would be utterly disgusting. Rather take the number to 16. If you are not willing to be that aggressive then you have to have minimum 12 teams. Wake up ICC

Chapter 5:-Europe Division 3 (T20) Championship 2011, World Twenty20 Qualifier

After Africa, Americas and EAP it was not time for Europe to start the qualification process for 2012 ICC World T20.  6 teams Slovenia, Czech Republic, Turkey, Estonia, Bulgaria and Sweden started their journey hopefully to qualify for the highest level possible for them. Though most teams were built on Expats or people of cricket playing nation's origin like Pakistani's, Indian, English etc there were few teams which had local players. Estonia had majority local players and many local players in the host team Slovenia.
The tournament was hosted by Slovenia and Austria. No team was making a debut in the tournament as all teams had been part of Div 5 and 6 of Europe in the OD format. The favorite of the tournament were Sweden along with the Hosts Slovenia. The tournament was quite low key in the media as compared to the tournament of Africa, America and EAP where the news regularly came out in the local newspapers. Perhaps the dominance of Soccer specially the Big 4 league and Champions Trophy is too how for others sports to make little space for themselves. Hopefully in future, the weight-age of cricket news will increase outside the British Isles also.
The tournament started with Estonia making a 240+ run score against the hosts which proved a task even higher than Everest. Sweden kept the tag of favorites and did not loose even a singe game and topping the pool qualifying for Div 2. Slovenia could not take much advantage of them being hosts. After Estonia they lost to Sweden and then finished the tournament losing the last match of tournament to Czech Republic.

The table was as follows

                P   W  NR   L   Pts    NRR
Sweden          5   5   0   0    10   4.78
Estonia         5   3   0   2     6   0.19
Slovenia        5   2   0   3     4  -0.15
Czech Republic  5   2   0   3     4  -0.43
Turkey          5   2   0   3     4  -2.36
Bulgaria        5   1   0   4     2  -1.12

Chapter 4:-Americas Division 2 (T20) Championship 2011, World Twenty20 Qualifier

After Belize won a promotion to Div 2, it was now time for action. Hosted in Suriname the winner would not only have promotion to Div 1 but also qualification to World Cricket League Div 8. There were 6 teams taking part:- Hosts Suriname, Div 3 promoted Belize, favorites Bahamas and Panama, Turks and Caicos & Brazil.

Bahamas who regularly play in Div 1 were the clear favorites. Suriname and Panama were expected to put some pressure on the favorites.

The tournament went along with 5 team fighting for the top spot. Brazil was outclassed by all teams. Finally Suriname winning 4 of the 5 matches came out on the Top. Panama, Belize and Turks & Caicos Islands ending with 6 points with Panama coming on top on Run Rate. The favorite's Bahama had a dismal tournament with just winning 2 games and 4 points.

The final points table was

                   P   W   L  Pts      NRR
Suriname           5   4   1    8     0.32
Panama             5   3   2    6     1.36
Belize             5   3   2    6     0.92
Turks & Caicos     5   3   2    6    -0.19
Bahamas            5   2   3    4    -0.56
Brazil             5   0   5    0    -2.58

Chapter 3:- EAP Division 2 (T20) Championship, World Twenty20 Qualifier

After Ghana in Africa then Costa Rica, Central America this time the tournament moved to Samoa in the Pacific Islands or Oceania. The country was formerly known as Western Samoa. This tournament marked the debut of 2 Asian teams of EAP region:- South Korea and Philippines. For South Korea it is a important step as they will be hosting the 2014 Asian Games which will feature Cricket in the T20 format. There were also reports on ICC website where South Koreans were seen practicing in snow for the tournament.
The second team which debuted were Philippines. A country with not a great sporting culture and being a member of ICC for over 4 years, this was a important milestone for the country where the game has been introduced by expats from Australia, India and Pakistan.

6 teams were taking part in the tournament. The 3 teams mentioned above debutant South Korea & Philippines, the hosts Samoa and three other teams Tonga, Cook Islands and Indonesia. Samoa, Cook Islands and Tonga were the favorites and much was expected from Indonesia who recently had been awarded best youth development program. Not much was expected from the debutant though.

When the tournament progressed it was to amaze many. Philippines performed very nicely coming second in pool and reaching the finals. The South Koreans also did decently having 1 victory in league and then coming 5th by defeating Indonesia in rank play-off's. The league standing were as follows


Teams          P   W   N   L   Pts      NRR
Samoa          5   5   0   0    10     3.63
Phillipines    5   4   0   1     8     0.11
Tonga          5   2   0   3     4     0.11
Cook Islands   5   2   0   3     4    -1.10
Indonesia      5   1   0   4     2    -1.99
South Korea    5   1   0   4     2    -2.85

Chapter 2:-Americas Division 3 (T20) Championship 2011, World Twenty20 Qualifier

After the ICC Africa Div 3 where 3 countries made their debut i.e. Cameroon, Seychelles, Mali then came Americas Div 2 where this time Falkland Islands were making their debut. It was a tournament where 6 teams were taking part :- Belize, Panama, Mexico, Chile, Debutants Falkland Islands and Hosts Costa Rica.

The format was simple, all teams were in one pool and the Top teams qualifies for Div 2. The favorites for the tournament were Belize. Many people had high hopes from Falkland Islands as they though they being a British colony would have cricket culture somewhat similar to Seychelles did in Africa Div 3.

The teams of Belize and Falkland Islands were former British colonies and inherited the cricket culture from there. Mexico, Chile, Costa Rica and Peru teams were full of expats from South Asia or Aus/NZ or Eng and they were the one's that have introduced cricket there.

The points tally of the tournament went as follows

TEAM               P   W   L   Pts    NRR
Belize             5   5   0   10     3.32
Peru               5   4   1    8     1.79
Chile              5   3   2    6    -0.07
Mexico             5   2   3    4    -1.01
Costa Rica         5   1   4    2    -1.59
Falkland Islands   5   0   5    0    -4.36

Chapter 1:- Africa Div 3 (T20) Chanpionship, 2011, World Twenty20 Qualifier

The path to 2012 World Twenty20 started its first leg with 7 nations of Africa fighting it out in hope of reach the ultimate pinnacle. The 7 Nations played in WCL Africa Div 3. These nations were:- Mali, Gambia, Cameroon, Lesotho, Morocco, Seychelles & Rwanda. The winner of this tournament would qualify for Africa Div 2

Gambia have a cricketing culture with they being former member of the West African team and a former British colony.
Rwanda has been going really strong on cricket development with their schools regularly taking part in Uganda. This has lead to decent levels of development
Seychelles is a former British Colony with a cricket legacy. They regularly played a triangular tournament with Maldives & Mauritius until the 1990's. They were the 105th member(Latest) member of ICC and this was their first tournament
Morocco:- They are also new to the cricketing spectrum. They however had the credit of hosting ODI at the stadium between South Africa, Pakistan & Sri Lanka
Lesotho are completely surrounded by South Africa and hence does not leave any doubt where cricket comes from
Mali and Cameroon are teams on which I don't have much information

The teams were divided into 2 groups
GROUP A:- Rwanda, Lesotho & Cameroon
GROUP B:- Seychelles, Morocco, Gambia & Mali

The tournament favorites Rwanda virtually had no competition in their group. They simply thrashed both the teams and qualified for finals. Cricket influence of South Africa helped them defeat Cameroon and come second

Group A
Team P W L T/NR Pts
Rwanda 2 2 0 0 4
Lesotho 2 1 1 0 2
Cameroon 2 0 2 0 0

In other group the teams were new to each other but West African experience had made them the favorites. However it was the newcomer Seychelles that rocked the world and won all their matches. Morocco with good infrastructure managed to come second while Gambia third, not making much use of their past experiences. Mali came 4th in group and hence last overall in tournament as they would not play any playoff.

Group B
Team P W L T/NR Pts
Seychelles 3 3 0 0 6
Morocco 3 2 1 0 4
Gambia 3 1 2 0 2
Mali 3 0 3 0 0


The final match was between Seychelles and Rwanda. The winner would go into the Div 2 and rest would have to play it out next time after 2 years. However Rwanda kept to their tag and won the tournament qualifying for Africa Div 2.

FINAL STANDING
1. Rwanda (Qualify for Africa Div 2)
2. Seychelles
3. Lesotho
4. Morocco
5. Gambia
6. Cameroon
7. Mali

Journey to 2012 ICC World Twenty20

Cricket new rising star will be held in Sri Lanka in 2012. The process of qualification of the same has already started. We would be following the qualification process very closely here. First to start with we will have a complete understanding of the process.

What is Twenty20?
Twenty20 is the latest format developed in cricket. It consists of both team batting or balling for 20 overs. The match lasts for 3.5 hours much comparable to other sports like Baseball, Football etc.
It involves explosive form of cricket with much higher ratio of 4's and 6's and is entertaining for the crowds. ICC (International Cricket Council) has made it the guiding vehicle to introduce cricket to new markets.

How many teams will be playing World Twenty20 and what will be the format?
16 teams will be playing in the world cup. The format has not yet been decided. Most likely it will be 4 pools of 4 teams each. Then top 2 teams qualify to Super 8's with again 2 groups of 4. Then we will have a Semi Final and a Final.
Whenever the exact format comes I will definitely update the same

How many similar world cup have happened and who are the winners?
This would be the 4th World Cup. The previous 3 have been as follows
2007, South Africa:- India defeated arch rivals Pakistan to win the first World Cup
2009, England:- Pakistan defeated Sri Lanka
2010, West Indies:- England defeated arch rivals Australia to lift their first ICC trophy

What is the qualification process?
To understand the qualification process we need to understand the structure of ICC.

ICC has got 3 level of membership.
Test Nations:- These are the highest level of members who are officially allowed to play Test Cricket (5day matches). These nations only have voting rights. Presently there are 10 Test Nations:- Australia, Bangladesh, England, India, New Zealand, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, South Africa, West Indies (A combination of 20 Caribbean nations) & Zimbabwe
Associates:- These are countries where cricket is firmly established, but yet not at a level to play Test Cricket. In simple words, cricket is one of the major say 15 games with a proper structure to manage it. There are 34 Associate Members.
Affiliates:-These are nations where cricket is in developing stage and has got regulation to play it as per ICC regulations. There are 60 Affiliate Members.

ICC manages Associate and Affiliate through 5 regions. These 5 regions are:-Asia, Europe, Africa, Americas & East Asia Pacific

The Top Associate and Affiliate from these regions form a part of the World Cricket League. There are 8 Divisions of World Cricket League. Division 1 to 7 have 6 teams each. Division 8 has 8 teams. The rest of the nations play in the Regional Division i.e WCL Africa or WCL Europe etc.

The World Cricket League runs over a period of 2 years. It is in 50 Over format. Since a world cup (50 Over) is after 4 years, hence for a 50 Over WC, 2 cycle of WCL happen.
From previous Division 8, the top 2 teams would have qualified for Div 7. The 3rd stays in Div 8. From previous Div 7 the bottom 2 are relegated to Div 8. Hence 5 slots left. These slots are filled by 1 team from each region. At the end, again top 2 teams go to Div 7, 3rd stays and rest 5 go back into regional tournaments.
For Div 3 to Div 7, there are 6 teams. Top 2 qualify to higher Div. Middle 2 stay and bottom 2 are relegated to lower Division.
In Division 2, the Top 4 qualify for 50 Over WC Qualifer. Bottom 2 are relegated to Div 3. This Div happens once in 4 years. The 4 teams in Div 2 are the teams rank 7 to 10 from 50 Over WCQ and 2 more come from Div 3
Division 1 are teams ranked 1 to 6 in WCQ. Like Div 2 it also happens once in 4 years. All teams in Div 1 get ODi status i.e there 50 overs and 20 overs matches are recogonized in official records
Finally happens the World Cup Qualifers. It has got 12 Teams. 6 teams from Div 1, Top from Div 2 and Top 2 from Div 3 form a part. Based on ranking Top 6 again go into Div 1, 7 to 10 in Div 2 and 11 & 12 in Div 3.
Hence in Div 3 for the first cycle in WC qualification top 2 teams reach the Div 2. Then Div 2 is played. Top 4 into WCQ and bottom 2 back to Div 3. In the next cycle the top 2 teams go into WCQ directly

Hence this was the complete ICC structure.

Coming back to the qualification structure for 2012 World Twenty20.
As expected the Test Teams directly qualify. Hence 10 slots gone. Left are 6.

For these 6 slots there will be a 20-20 WC Qualifier. It will also consist of 16 teams. The 16 teams will be decided as follows:- 6 teams of Div 1 (Because they have official ODI and 20-20 status). Rest 10 slots will be filled as follows Region (WCQ Slots):- Asia (3), Europe(2), Africa(2), Americas (2) and EAP(1). Hence from 16 teams 6 will go into World Cup

The 6 teams of Division 1 are Afghanistan, Canada, Ireland, Kenya, Netherlands & Scotland

Now next questions comes into mind, how will regional teams be decided
The regional tournaments of 5 regions have all been scheduled. These are as follows

Europe
Europe Div 3 (Slovenia):-Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Estonia, Slovenia, Sweden, Turkey
Europe Div 2 (Belgium):-Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Finland, Hellas, Isle of Man, Luxembourg, Malta, Portugal, Spain, Switzerland, winner of ICC Europe Division 3
Europe Div 1(Jersey/Guernsey):- Croatia, Denmark, France, Germany, Gibraltar, Guernsey, Israel, Italy, Jersey, Norway, Spain, Winner from ICC Europe Division 2

Africa
Africa Div 3 (Ghana):- Cameroon, Gambia, Lesotho, Mali, Morocco, Rwanda, Seychelles
Africa Div 2 (South Africa):- Zambia, Ghana, Malawi, Mozambique, Sierra Leone, Swaziland, Tanzania, Nigeria, Botswana, winner from ICC Africa Division 3
Africa Div 1 (Kenya) also known as African Premier League:- Kenya, Uganda, Namibia, South Africa Emerging, Zimbabwe Emerging, Winner from ICC Africa Division 2

Kenya, are already in qualifiers. South Africa and Zimbabwe are Test Nations.Even if they win the Divisions tournaments the next highest ranked teams will qualify.

Asia
ACC (Asia Cricket Council) makes a ranking of Asian teams based on the performance in Senior, U-19 and U-15 tournaments. The teams which perform good across all age groups will get higher ranks. This is to encourage overall development of cricket starting right from children. Based on these ranking the top 10 teams have been given a chance to play for qualifiers out of 18 teams in Asia

ACC T20 (Nepal):- Afghanistan, Nepal, UAE, Oman, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Bhutan, Kuwait, Maldives, Saudi Arabia

Afghanistan are part of WCL Div 1. If they come in top 3, then the next highest rank would qualify.

Americas
Americas Div 3 (Costa Rica):- Belize, Chile, Peru, Mexico,Costa Rica, Falkland Islands
Americas Div 2 (Suriname):- Bahamas, Brazil, Panama, Suriname, Turks and Caicos Islands, Winner of America Division 3
Americas Div 1 (TBC):- Argentina, Bermuda, Canada, Cayman Islands, USA, Winner from ICC Americas Division 2

Canada are part of WCL Div 1. If they come in top 2, then the next highest rank would qualify.

East Asia Pacific
EAP Div 2 (Samoa):- Indonesia, Samoa, Tonga, Cook Islands, Philippines, South Korea
EAP Div 1 (Papua New Guinea):- PNG, Fiji, Japan, Vanuatu, Winner from ICC EAP Division 2

The race has already begun with Africa Div 3 already over and Americas Div 3 going on as I type this blog. I would be updating each and every division. Stay here to be tuned to all the action. This is truly going like Football qualification with the best 16 making, only difference is test teams have a direct entry which they surely deserve. Keep tuned for all the action. I am excited.