Give the minnows a chance to shine!

[Dragon Fire]

Would it really be that hard for the ICC to modify the England schedule just a tiny bit? They could - rather than having a meaningless tour at the start of the summer have a fixture list containing:

England v Ireland One off test at Cardiff
England v Scotland One off test at Chester-le-Street
England v Netherlands One off test at the Rose Bowl

It would be a good opportunity to see if the minnows are up for test cricket, and also to see if some new grounds are up to it. The same could be done elsewhere:

Bangladesh v Afghanistan One off test at Chittagong
South Africa v Zimbabwe One off test anywhere in South Africa
South Africa v Kenya One off test anywhere in South Africa
West Indies v Canada One off test at St. Kitts
West Indies v Bermuda One off test at Guyana
Sri Lanka v UAE One off test at Galle

See where I'm going with this? Give the top associates a chance - it can't hurt.

 

[TumTum]

But then that just makes cricket worse for the rest of us. No thanks.

 

[Cricketman]

As long as it is not India, I am a minnow backer all the way. Hell, I hope they even put up a good fight against us, we just can't lose .

The ONLY good thing about the 2007 WC was Irelands run. I was proud of the Bangla boys too but Cricket is always going to be big there, whether they win or not. Ireland was truly a Cinderella story, and I thought we would have a chance to see it happen again today. Guess not :\

 

[McLOVIN]

West Indies vs USA, Lauderhill, Florida

I want cricket to grow

 

[pcfan123]

Lauderhill ftw, that is the next market for cricket now. Its already scheduled to be an annual event.

 

[McLOVIN]

My home ground that is!

MacLovin added 6 Minutes and 26 Seconds later...

Once they get the floodlight and everything it will be 1 of the top 10 cricket grounds

 

[pcfan123]

They already have them, the 1st Twenty20 is a night game

 

[McLOVIN]

Those are cricket standards. I am hoping they'd get some MLB or NFL lvl stuff

 

[drainpipe32]

As long as you don't make an NCL out of it, I'm alright with the Yanks playing cricket

 

[McLOVIN]

Why not? Would you rather have a NCL or IPL? I am defo sure if we do make it, and i dont mean not some crap run by Indian or Pak business man, but the real deal, i am sure it will be better then IPL..

Every 1 would love to have a cricket league up other American league standards. You know how big the cricketers will be then? They dont get enough attention now, no where near what NFL, NBA or other player gets.

 

[Owzat]

I doubt Ireland, Scotland or Netherlands are going to present a contest, you might get lucky and fill the grounds with away fans, but they would be over in 2-3 days in all probability and ticket sales are one of the keys in Test cricket these days.

I'm not sure getting hammered would help the cricket of those non-Test nations, I'd rather they go with potentially close contests as in the second tier I've long proposed ICC need to bring in. Kenya, Scotland or Ireland playing Bangladesh, West Indies or Zimbabwe would be more interesting than them playing England. England don't lose ODIs to minnows so I can't see them losing Tests, but if they played those Test nations often enough I reckon they'd come out with a few "upsets" in ODIs and maybe even Tests.

UAE and Afghanistan have played one World Cup between them, assuming they both play in the qualifying competition then what makes anyone think they'd not be humiliated if they played a Test (nation) if they can't even get through qualifiers?!?!? I know Afghanistan are at the T20 but that's mickey mouse cricket and didn't they get comfortably beaten?

Nice idea, I think the fixtures need work though. Maybe if England were to play a Test against someone other than the Test nations it could be a combined team from say Ireland, Scotland, Holland and Kenya. Should be enough in every department to make some kind of fight of it, and give one or two Kenyans a Test to their name that they were robbed of when Bangladesh were given Test status ahead of Kenya (wrongly)

 

[sohum]

By Test you mean first class games, right? Otherwise, it seems like you want to give about 5 teams Test status overnight.

 

[IanG]

There's already the Intercontinental Cup. Those games have First Class Status. Whilst I'm all for minnows getting more cricket and more exposure to top level cricket, You need to remember too that players from Non Test Playing Countries are at best Semi Professional players.

 

[Owzat]

By Test you mean first class games, right? Otherwise, it seems like you want to give about 5 teams Test status overnight.

If you're referring to my post, I use test in the same way the originator did to mean five day match.

 

[Dragon Fire]

I've thought further about this idea, and maybe it would be better to have a rest of the world test team. Whether Zimbabwe would be allowed to be part of such a team remains to be seen, but if they weren't, then it could look something like:

. William Porterfield - IRE
. Eric Schwartzynski - NET
. Steve Tikolo - KEN
. Ryan ten Doeschate - NET
. Niall O'Brien - IRE
. Kyle O'Brien - IRE
. Ant Botha - IRE
. Thomas Odoyo - KEN
. Chris Wright - SCO
. Khurram Chohan - CAN
. Boyd Rankin - IRE

But it would need a spinner.