Of Minnows., seriously

I hope everyone is enjoying the Cricket World Cup through now. I liked the Pakistan-West Indies game and i think that this WC will turn out to be a good one as there are a lot of serious games ahead of us. Yeah! just after we are done with the minnows!

Not so fast., these minnows have some guts. They have always created upsets and it's foolish for the big teams to overlook them as there might be some surprises. Lets recap:

• 1975: None
• 1979: Sri Lanka defeats India
• 1983: Zimbabwe defeats Australia
• 1987: None
• 1992: Zimbabwe defeats England
• 1996: Kenya defeats West Indies
• 1999: Bangladesh defeats Pakistan
• 2003: Kenya defeats Sri Lanka as well as Zimbabwe; Canada defeats Bangladesh

Dravid has supported minnow participation and so have many a captains over the last few years made at least a cursory experience-will-benefit-them remark! However it is sad to note that the cricket administration has done nothing or near-nothing about getting the associate teams into the main fold. Kenya is no closer to the dream of being a full fledged cricketing nation while we have lost Zimbabwe from the test playing fratenity (or nearly!) and the not so great cricket administration sits in meeting across the world's most expensive hotels to just discuss and very little.

Here's my 2 cent plan for the next 8 years (thru 2015):

• All test playing nations to modify their policy that each of their domestic team (or atleast in the Elite division) will have atleast one player from the associate nations and a maximum of 3
• Each of the associate members can have a maximum of 2 international cricketers on the team for the world cup subject to the fact that they should play atleast 2 years in the associate nation's domestic cricket
• Of the 10 test playing nations, the big-8 (leave BAN & ZIM) will send their top domestic team (or 'A' team) on a tour to atleast one associate nation for 5 ODI series (or 3 tests/ 3 ODIs)
• The big-8 will send their national team to tour atleast 1 associate nation for a 5-ODI series, once every 4 years. ICC to plan that it is staggered that there is one tourney every year

I guess my 2 cents above is not too expensive to implement or too radical that the whole cricketing world will feel bad about. So time to stop uttering the sympathy line and time for action.