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Dharamsala, March 12
It’s the dirge of the poorer cousin. It’s heard often enough, and it’s not given any attention. It was heard again tonight as the Netherlands exited the qualifying stage of the T20 World Cup.
Their match against Oman was washed out due to rain; they’d lost their first match to Bangladesh. This means that the Netherlands are out of the race to qualify for the main round of the World Cup after completing only one of their three games.
Peter Borren, the Dutch captain, was close to tears after the result. It had taken a herculean effort from his bunch of assorted amateurs to make it to these qualifiers for the World T20. A close defeat to Bangladesh, followed by the cruel rain tonight, crushed their hopes.
Borren lashed out at the ICC for not giving his team, and the other Associate members, more playing days and more resources. He lamented the lack of opportunities to play the game his team loves.
10 days in a year
“We’ve got two more One-day games (against Nepal in the World Cricket League) and one four-day game against Afghanistan,” he said. “That is pretty much the schedule for the rest of the year. It’s three more games this year (than normal), which is Associate cricket in a nutshell.”
That’s around 10 days of international cricket for national team. It sounds like a joke. “It’s obviously not enough cricket… Today’s rain means that we’re in a position where we possibly won’t be playing in a world event for many years,” Borren added. That’s true. The T20 World Cup will become a quadrennial event from the next edition, reducing the opportunities for the Associates.
Minor coup in 2007
The ICC likes to tom-tom its High Performance Programme, launched in 2001, to improve cricket in the Associate nations. It did help the Associates. The 2007 World Cup was a watershed year for the smaller nations — Ireland knocked out Pakistan, Bangladesh did the same to India. Did the ICC celebrate this expansion of cricket’s power base? Not quite. The early exit of India and Pakistan in 2007 caused huge financial losses. The ICC changed the tournament’s format to ensure the teams with bigger markets (read India and Pakistan) were guaranteed at least a certain number of games.
The Associates were told they’d be more welcome in the T20 World Cup because, according to then ICC CEO Haroon Lorgat, “Twenty20 is the best format to develop the game worldwide”.
What Lorgat didn’t say then was that the Associates would mainly play among themselves in the ‘qualification’ stage in 2016, and that only two among the eight Associates could make it to the tournament proper.
Poor cousins
The Associate members of the ICC comprise the sub-class that exists below the top level. Life there is full of agony and struggle; there’s little money to earn from the game, the players are amateurs or semi-professionals who practise before or after tending to their day jobs.
The ICC doesn’t care much for them; the ICC makes bombastic claims about widening the base of the game, but it’s not overflowing with love for the associates.
Borren said that the ICC has clearly not done enough. “We can’t afford to do our own bilateral series,” he said. “It is very difficult for us. We then hear World Cricket League has gone to a three-year cycle because it is not affordable otherwise.”
Borren implied that the greed of the bigger nations is depriving the Associates of funds. “To be honest, there is money somewhere. There is a lot of money in cricket,” he said. “It’s just not really being spent on expanding the game. The revenue should be spread more far out so that we have that opportunity to play, so that our young guys get that opportunity to become better cricketers… So that cricket can be spread throughout the world.”
He said the Dutch aren’t looking for much more money. They receive less than $1.2 million a year from the ICC — that’s around Rs 8 crore a year. This would be a fraction of what, say, Ravindra Jadeja makes in one year.
“We are not looking for millions and millions of dollars,” Borren said. “If the game wants to grow, then surely the revenue needs to be shared more evenly… Not just amongst three, eight, 10 teams but throughout the Associates and Affiliates as well hopefully… And it has been said over and over again.”
William Porterfield, the Ireland captain did say this two days ago. The words of Borren and Porterfield are part of the regular lament of the Associates at the big ICC events in which they’re let in. They’re led to their corner to grieve in solitude.
