The volume of cricket continues to go through the roof, more and more nations are having to field separate squads for series which happen at the same time. An England ODI squad led by Eon Morgan is currently playing the Netherlands in a 3 match ODI series, while another captained by Ben Stokes is involved in a Test series vs New Zealand.
With India's two match T20I series against Ireland scheduled to begin on June 26 it's a good time to analyze the importance and the significance overall of the bigger cricket playing nations taking on the emerging teams in bilateral series as far as growing the sport of cricket is concerned. Former India cricketer, national selector and BCC I General Manager for Cricket Operations Sabra Karim was a guest on Times of India's sports podcast TOI Sportscast recently and talked about his experience as a cricket administrator looking at growing the game of cricket globally and also what he thinks should be done going ahead to make sure cricket has a larger footprint across the world. Look at it as the responsibility of the called behemoths of cricket to offer such opportunities to emerging nations, and that's the best possible way in which you can add to the growth of cricket in a global manner. Cricket as a sport has to become a global sport, we are far away from that and the only way a strong nation like India can contribute to that cause is by taking time out to play against teams like Ireland, Zimbabwe or any other emerging team that is coming through the system and the best format to do so is T20 cricket, because it offers to a large extent some kind of opportunity to these emerging nations, to put up a strong fight against such strong teams. I do expect Ireland to do that, because they have been playing T20 cricket regularly. In fact, just some time back they hosted the West Indies for some T20 games, so this will be a great opportunity for Ireland to test not just their cricketers but also their entire system against a strong nation like India. Sabra Karim said on TOI Sportscast.
A Quick look at the ICC T20I rankings will show that as many as 74 nations are listed in the rankings, with India at number 1 and Estonia at number 74. There are a total of 106 ICC member countries currently, with only 12 of them being full members (Test playing nations) and 94 being Associate members. While the game has spread to every continent, including Africa, the Americas and Europe, there are only a handful of global giants of cricket. The rest are still very much in the nascent stage of developing and promoting the sport.
The last T20I World Cup played in 2021 had as many as 16 teams, but 8 of them played in the First Round, with 4 advancing to the Super 12, where they joined the 8 other teams which had qualified on the basis of their rankings (India were the official hosts).
You must be logged in to post a comment.