I disagree with tier system or striping off a test nation from its test status based on its performance. I guess, ICC should be more careful before granting any country a test status. It is sole responsibility of ICC to make sure that the country is ready to enter into the competitive world of test cricket. But once the test status has been granted by ICC (who by the way is comprised of so-called cricket pundits), it should not be stripped off, rather all efforts should be made to provide enough test experience to new minnows of cricket world so that they can stand up on their own feet.
Banning a test nation from playing any more test cricket for some years is a very complex problem and it is not as simple as it seems to be. One has to understand that cricket does play an important role in people’s lives in many countries (especially in south Asia) and any nation would consider it quite insulting. A deep involvement of Sri Lankan Prime-Minister in particular and Sri Lankan nation in general in Murli’s case is a prime example of how a favorite sports and a nation’s ego goes hand by hand. Therefore, ICC better consider all possible ramifications before taking any further step in this direction. Moreover, it is not all about emotions. It would also be detrimental for the “overall cricket” of that particular country. Do you guys really think that cricket standards in BD will improve should we decide to kick it out of test playing nations today?
In fact, ICC is very much responsible for today’s cricketing mess. Who was responsible for the premature entry of BD into test cricket? Who should be blamed for such a late intervention into ZCU’s matters when every one was pledging ICC to take an action? Today ICC wants to save the integrity of the test cricket but one may ask these honorable pundits that who was responsible for this mess at the first place? Another million-dollar question for ICC would be what exactly ICC has done in past 15 years in particular to improve the quality of cricket in non-test playing nations except arranging couple of tournaments here and there? For instance, it is worthwhile to question ICC’s role in Kenya Cricket where sponsorship was and is a major problem in promoting cricket. So many of Kenyan cricketers expressed their worries regarding the lack of funds and extremely poor salaries after 2003 World cup. But I do not recall any major plan announced by ICC to improve this situation.
Given that the decision of awarding ZIM and BD a test status was made by the highest authority of cricketing world, there is no point of revoking it. I guess at this point, BD and ZIM needs international experience really bad and this is the only way they can improve. I believe that it would be in longer interest of this noble game. BD is already showing signs of remarkable improvement. Yeah, it is not much fun to watch these teams playing but then we should not forget that it took NZ 26 years to win its first match.
Having siad that, i would also like to point out that ZIM problem is political and should be dealt on same grounds. I support banning ZIM from playing any more cricket because of racism problems, just like we banned SA for almost 25 years based on same grounds. Nevertheless, as soon as racism card is excluded from ZIM cricket, it should be allowed to play cricket. In fact, ZIM team is not a bad team if it is playing at its full strength.
This two-tier system is also mind boggling as pointed out by some guppies already and I do not see it serving the cricket any better. It would be extremely unfortunate to ask a regular test-playing nation (all major 7 countries) to move to a second-rate group where it has to play minnows. To me, it would be a step backward and it would simply deteriorate the cricket of that particular nation even more. Imagine asking Lara to play against Holland UAE. I am sure he would simply retire. In addition, we already have a system in place for non-test playing nations in parallel to regular test playing nations cricketing system. So what exactly would it serve? More competitive cricket among top 7 countries …May be but for how long we want to restrict cricket to those seven countries only. And like I said before, if you don’t let play minnows play against Giants, how would you expect them to grow?