ICC Cricket World Cup 2015: Do the Associate teams really detract from the tournament?

The most frequently cited reasons for ‘minnows’ is that their presence leads to one-sided matches.

The International Cricket Council (ICC) is set to reduce the number of teams in ICC Cricket World Cup, to 10 from its current 14, from the 2019 tournament onwards — on the supposed grounds that doing so will “make sure all matches are as competitive as possible”. Michael Jones investigates the validity of that claim.

Before, during and after each World Cup — and sometimes between them, if an ICC announcement drags the issue back into the spotlight — two connected questions are the subject of recurrent debate. What is the best format for the tournament? And how many, if any, Associate teams should be involved?

The main arguments for involving the Associates are clear: giving them fixtures against the top teams gets them more exposure, more experience and ultimately raises the standard of cricket in those countries, contributing to the spread of the game beyond its traditional strongholds. Of those countries which originally entered the World Cup as Associates, Sri Lanka, Zimbabwe and Bangladesh have all progressed to Test status — in Sri Lanka’s case, to winning the tournament.

The most frequently cited reasons for the ‘miws’ to be excluded are that their presence can lead to high numbers of one-sided matches early in the tournament, and that if they progress at the expense of higher-ranked teams, fans lose interest in the later stages. These two arguments contradict each other: the Associates are simultaneously being accused of not being good enough and of being too good. While it is debatable whether the progress of Bangladesh and Ireland to the Super Eights stage in 2007 made the remainder of the tournament more or less interesting for neutral fans, the early elimination of India and Pakistan certainly made it a financial disaster. A cynic may wonder, then, whether any move to shut the lower-ranked teams out of the tournament is really an attempt to keep India in it as long as possible, thus maximising revenue for the boards.

Shortly before the tournament, Dave Richardson — formerly South Africa’s wicket-keeper, now ICC Chief Executive — attempted to justify the reduction to ten teams on the grounds that the World Cup “should be played between teams that are evenly matched and competitive”. As he was at pains to emphasise, it is still possible that Ireland or Afghanistan may feature in ICC Cricket World Cup 2019, but in order to do so they would have to finish ahead of one of the two bottom-ranked Full-Member countries — most likely Bangladesh or Zimbabwe — in the previous year’s qualifying tournament. Ed Joyce was quick to point out that the qualifiers will take place in Bangladesh, giving them home advantage and probably leaving Zimbabwe, Ireland and Afghanistan fighting it out for the one remaining place.

But what of Richardson’s supposed justification? How competitive, or otherwise, are the Associate teams? If the ICC’s intention is to ensure that teams are evenly matched, will excluding them help to achieve this aim? To answer this question, let us first define what constitutes being “evenly matched”. Only a relatively small proportion of One-Day Internationals (ODIs) end in particularly close finishes, so “evenness” must be fairly broadly defined unless we wish to class a majority of matches as being uneven. Any decision as to where exactly to draw the line between “even” and “uneven” is a subjective one, but for the purpose of analysis I will define any win by 100 or more runs, or seven or more wickets, to be “one-sided”; any smaller margin is “competitive” (for rain-reduced matches, the margin will be considered commensurate to the number of overs, e.g. in a match reduced to 30 overs, a margin of 60 or more is one-sided). The number of balls remaining when the team batting second reached the victory target is disregarded, since any victory which would be considered one-sided by that definition is likely also to be when defined in terms of wickets: it is improbable that any team would win by seven wickets in the last over, because they would have used the wickets in hand to accelerate earlier. On the other hand, even if the target is reached with 20 overs in hand, the match cannot be considered one-sided if the chasing team loses seven or eight wickets in the process.

How did the Associate Nations fare in ICC Cricket World Cup 2011?

Having defined the terms under consideration, let us see how the four Associate teams fared in the 2011 tournament. Canada, Kenya, Ireland and Netherlands played 22 matches between them; two of those were against each other, so there were 20 Full Member vs Associate clashes.

Only one of them, Ireland’s famous run chase against England, resulted in a win for the underdog; of the other 19, nine were competitive, ten one-sided. There was a marked difference in performance between the four teams: Ireland fared best, with only a single heavy defeat to their names when they went down by 131 runs to South Africa; in addition to their victory over England, they were competitive against Bangladesh (lost by 27 runs), India (by five wickets) and West Indies (by 44 runs).

Netherlands fared respectably in three matches, losing by only six, five and six wickets to England, India and Bangladesh respectively — but when they lost big, they lost very big: by 215 runs to West Indies and 231 to South Africa.

Canada restricted Pakistan to a mere 46-run victory, and at 97 runs their loss to New Zealand narrowly makes the “competitive” category; they were thrashed by Sri Lanka, Zimbabwe and Australia.

Kenya were the worst of the lot: a 60-run defeat to Australia was the only match in which they were competitive, with heavy defeats to the other four Test teams in their group.

It should be clear from the variation between their records that, in assessing the competitiveness of the Associates, they should not be treated as a uniform group, but considered individually.

Shortly after reaching its peak with a run to the semi-finals in 2003, Kenyan cricket went into freefall, with administrative incompetence, infighting and lack of a development structure to ensure new talent came through to replace those players coming to the end of their careers; it came as little surprise when they failed to qualify for this year’s tournament, and even lost their ODI status. Canada have had similar problems, with the same result; after participating in the last three World Cups, they will not be seen at this one either.

Netherlands have fared better in T20, overcoming the departure of Ryan ten Doeschate (whose two centuries in the 2011 tournament were largely responsible for limiting the margins of defeat) to qualify for the main group stage of ICC World T20 2014, then defeating England when they got there — but after a poor performance at the World Cup qualifying tournament, they are not currently playing ODIs either. So let us concentrate on the four Associates playing this year, and see how their records against the Test-playing countries stack up.

How have the Associates done since ICC Cricket World Cup 2011?

Ireland have not beaten another Test team in an ODI since their success against England in 2011 — although they came close with a tie against Pakistan in 2013, followed by a two-wicket defeat in which they had looked set for victory before Kamran Akmal and Wahab Riaz added 93 for the eighth wicket. They have rarely been pushovers, though: only one of their losses — a seven-wicket defeat to Pakistan in 2011 — fell into the “one-sided” category.

Afghanistan have recorded three victories over Test teams in the last year: one against Bangladesh at the Asia Cup, and two over Zimbabwe in a bilateral series — the last of them, by a round 100 runs, even earns the classification of being one-sided in their favour. They have suffered some heavy losses in the same period, though: 129 runs to Sri Lanka, eight wickets to both India and Zimbabwe.

Scotland have only been allocated four matches against Full Member countries in the period between World Cups, and with little success: a 39-run loss to England was respectable and 96 to Pakistan barely qualified as competitive, but Sri Lanka thrashed them by 183 runs and Australia by 200.

In the case of UAE, there is no evidence to go on at all: since regaining ODI status they have played seven matches, all against fellow Associates. A recent 3-1 series win against Afghanistan might suggest that they should be at least as competitive as the higher-ranked team, but they have had no opportunity to prove it.

Did Zimbabwe and Bangladesh do any better in ICC Cricket World Cup 2011?

Although there is less evidence to go on, there is still a difference between the best Associates and the others, suggesting that if the intention is to keep the tournament competitive, there may be a case for reducing the number of Associates participating, but not for eliminating them completely. Richardson’s contention, though, rests on the assumption that the top ten teams are evenly matched. Is this correct? Despite having been established as Full Members for more than two decades in the former case and one in the latter, Zimbabwe and Bangladesh are still widely viewed as “minnows”. Do they lose heavily less often than the Associates?

Zimbabwe had no problem with the two Associates in their group in 2011, beating both Canada and Kenya by massive margins, but fared rather less well against the other Test teams. New Zealand thrashed them by ten wickets, Pakistan by seven, Sri Lanka by 139 runs; only a 91-run defeat by Australia scraped over the threshold of “competitive”.

Bangladesh beat England by two wickets, but West Indies bowled them out for 58 and strolled home by nine wickets, and they also failed to reach three figures against South Africa as they slumped to defeat by 206 runs. Put another way, Zimbabwe suffered the same number of one-sided losses in their group as Canada; Bangladesh were on the receiving end of the same number as Netherlands, and one fewer than Ireland — and even then, Ireland’s margin of defeat to South Africa was significantly less embarrassing than Bangladesh’s against the same opponents. In the 2011 tournament, a match between a top eight teams and Zimbabwe or Bangladesh was statistically more likely to end in a thrashing than one between a top 10 team and an Associate.

Have Zimbabwe and Bangladesh fared any better than the Associates since ICC Cricket World Cup 2011?

Has their form improved since 2011? In the case of Zimbabwe, certainly: their fixture list since the start of 2014 has been rather a tough one — of their seven matches against the top eight teams, all in the space of three weeks in August and September, five were against South Africa and two Australia. They won one — their first ODI victory against Australia since their inaugural match in 1983 — and were competitive in four of the others; the only blots on their record coming when South Africa strolled to victory by seven wickets with more than 20 overs remaining, and Australia thrashed them by 198 runs in the first match of the triangular tournament. That is a higher proportion of heavy losses than Ireland have suffered over the same period — although in mitigation, Ireland have not played all their matches against the top two teams.

Bangladesh played 12 ODIs against top 8 teams last year, and failed to win any — although they had the better of their one abandoned match, reducing India to 119 for nine before rain came. Most of their losses were competitive, but they had a seven-wicket defeat to India and a 177 run mauling by West Indies, followed by a 91-run loss which only just made the cut. Like Zimbabwe, they suffered more heavy defeats than Ireland, but fewer than the other Associates.

What about the big guns?

Finally, what of the top eight teams themselves? Richardson’s stated intention that teams should be “evenly matched and competitive” relies on the assumption that the ones he prefers to invite are so, which is not always the case.

The quarter-finals of ICC Cricket World Cup 2011 involved all the top eight teams, but two of them ended in ten-wicket thrashings for England and West Indies at the hands of Sri Lanka and Pakistan respectively. West Indies had also suffered a one-sided loss to South Africa in the group stage, while New Zealand’s progress to the semi-finals was achieved despite heavy defeats to both Australia and Sri Lanka earlier in the tournament; they did get their own back in one match, with a similarly one-sided victory over Pakistan. Only four teams were competitive in every match, and two of them didn’t even make the semi-finals.

Top 8 teams vs each other in 2011 World Cup
Team	Matches	Wins	Tied	No result	Competitive losses	One-sided losses	% one-sided losses
India	6	4	1	0	1	0	0%
Sri Lanka	6	3	0	1	2	0	0%
Australia	4	1	0	1	2	0	0%
South Africa	4	2	0	0	2	0	0%
Pakistan	5	3	0	0	1	1	20%
England	4	2	1	0	0	1	25%
New Zealand	5	2	0	0	1	2	40%
West Indies	4	0	0	0	2	2	50%
Total	19	17	1	1	11	6	32%

Recent results don’t do much to support the hypothesis that the top eight teams are always competitive either: Pakistan and Sri Lanka both lost by significant margins in New Zealand, while England hammered India in the tri-series and were in their turn taken apart by Australia in the final. Let us see how frequent one-sided results are among these supposedly competitive top eight.

South Africa have been the only team to be competitive in every match they’ve played in the last year; their heaviest defeat was by 87 runs to Sri Lanka in July, while their three most recent losses have been by three, two and one wickets respectively.

Australia have lost fewer matches overall in the year — four to South Africa’s seven — but those did include a seven-wicket defeat to South Africa in Harare, when Faf du Plessis and AB de Villiers made light of a target of 328.

At the other end of the spectrum, England have failed to compete on a regular basis: a seven-wicket defeat in Australia at the start of the year was followed by margins of 157 runs at home to Sri Lanka, 133 runs and nine wickets at home to India, eight wickets away to Sri Lanka and 112 runs to Australia again.

Despite only playing 14 ODIs in the period under consideration, West Indies managed to clock up four heavy defeats — on New Year’s Day 2014 they were mauled by Corey Anderson and Jesse Ryder, and lost by 159 runs in a match reduced to 20 overs; more recently they suffered three drubbings in the space of four matches against South Africa, although they did manage to snatch a one-wicket win in between. Overall, more than a quarter of matches played between the top eight teams are one-sided.

Top 8 teams vs each other since 2014
Team	Matches	Wins	Tied	No result	Competitive losses	One-sided losses	% one-sided losses
South Africa	19	11	0	1	7	0	0%
Australia	21	16	0	1	3	1	5%
New Zealand	25	15	1	2	5	2	8%
India	23	10	1	1	8	3	13%
Sri Lanka	33	16	0	1	11	5	15%
Pakistan	16	4	0	0	9	3	19%
England	29	10	0	0	13	6	21%
West Indies	14	4	0	0	6	4	29%
Total	90	86	1	3	62	24	27%

The far smaller number of ODIs granted to the Associate teams makes comparisons difficult, but in percentage terms alone Ireland suffer fewer heavy defeats than five of the top eight teams. If its intention is to make the tournament more competitive, ICC may be justified in reducing the number of teams involved to twelve, since on the evidence of 2011 the third and fourth Associates tend to compete less well than the top two (the handful of matches played by Scotland against the top teams in the intervening period, and the none granted to UAE, provide insufficient evidence to suggest anything); but Richardson’s claim that a reduction to ten teams will increase the number of even matches is nonsense — unless, of course, he wishes to do so by granting automatic entry to the eight most competitive teams, and compelling the last four to fight it out for two places. That would mean guaranteed places in the tournament for South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Pakistan — and a qualifier involving England, West Indies, Zimbabwe and Afghanistan.

There is no evidence to suggest that allowing only two of Zimbabwe, Bangladesh, Ireland and Afghanistan to qualify would lead to more even contests; ICC might as well admit that the only possible grounds for doing so are commercial, not cricketing.

(Michael Jones’s writing focuses on cricket history and statistics, with occasional forays into the contemporary game)

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