Tuesday, February 01, 2005

The fall from bad to worse

Bangladesh have just won a series. Can you beleive it! In my last blog i vehemently stated that Bangladesh havent done anything to desrve their test status and i still hold by it. In fact i now beleive that two teams have to be stripped of their test status. First Zimbabwe ; they have been torn by the political turmoil in their country and when the ugly head of 'color feud' raises its head its danger for cricket. In this regard , the south africans have to be very wary. Like reservations in the indian education the south african selectors have fallen for the dangerous quota principle. Why dont they forget color and choose people only on talent? Its either this way or that. Coming back to the zimbabweians they are feilding a sub standard team thats so far from international standard that they have lost both the test as well as the one-day series. They dont deserve their test place.

Well , ICC could bring in the points system to good effect here. Rather than just ranking the teams based on points they could prescribe a lower cut -off , failing to go above which will lead to disqualification. A better implementation would be to have slabs or levels. The lower teams fall back to lower levels where they play with teams in their own level. This is very essential if cricket is to thrive.