Melbourne: ICC’s Chief Executive Officer Dave Richardson on Sunday said that the game’s governing body is all set to prune the number of teams from 14 to 10 for the next Cricket World Cup, scheduled to be held in England in 2019.
There is a possibility that the ICC World T20 will be made a 16-team event which would encourage some of the lower rung teams to get a taste of competitive cricket.
The members of the ICC Executive Board will be meeting here tomorrow for a “Strategic Review Meeting” in which the members are likely to agree to a 10-team format rather than existing 14 team structure, which makes it a cumbersome seven-week long tournament with a number of inconsequential matches.
“The way we are going, I believe we need to consolidate things to ensure that there is more competition amongst teams at the highest level. If we get a 10-team World Cup, all 10 teams must be capable of winning the tournament,” Richardson said. “Like in 1992, we had a nine-team format, where everyone played each other. It was by far the most exciting World Cup where it was difficult to predict the four semi-finalists. So we are hopeful that 10-team format might work,” the former South Africa wicketkeeper sounded positive about the downsizing of teams. (PTI)
