Published: Sep 22, 2016, 06:29 PM (IST)
Edited: Sep 22, 2016, 06:29 PM (IST)
Ireland and Afghanistan are to get an upgrade in international cricket as they are expected to be promoted to a Test playing nation in three years of time. Ireland are highly likely to play against England at the infamous cricket ground— Lord’s in 2019. This is an attempt from ICC to increase the popularity of the longest format of the game. Earlier ICC had a plan to introduce a two-division format in Tests that will include teams like Afghanistan, Ireland, Scotland, Hong Kong etc, but that plan has taken a back step now. Ireland have had international exposure in recent times with teams touring and playing ODIs on their soil. The Irish are to tour South Africa to play against one ODI each against the hosts and Australia. Afghanistan too have showed signs of improvement in a short period of time. They were the only ones who were able to beat West Indies in ICC T20 World Cup 2016. This move from ICC is expected to have a major impact on the performance of these two nations.
Cricket Ireland’s CEO Warren Deutrom seemed ecstatic about the turn of events for the Irish players as he told Off the Ball, “There’s a meeting in October in Cape Town in about three weeks time and there are some proposals that have been put on the table following a workshop that I attended in Dubai in early September. There were a lot of ideas kicked around. It wasn’t just about test cricket. We’ve been asked to be fairly circumspect about the specifics of what’s on the table but the press release that came out after that said there are going to be more opportunities for more teams in all formats of the game. And certainly, if I was to take anything from those meetings, there was positive encouragement towards more teams playing test cricket.”
“The decision will hopefully be made in mid-October but the actual starting point for the new proposals wouldn’t probably be until after the 2019 World Cup and if there were going to be a couple of new test countries, that would depend on the finishing positions of the four-day competition for non-test countries called the Continental Cup which doesn’t finish until about October next year. Now, Ireland’s doing well in that. We’ve got maximum points from out of the seven games and Afghanistan is in second place. So nothing guaranteed but then that’s always been the case with Irish cricket. We make sure we do our best to be in pole position when the opportunities come,” he added.
