The head of Kenya's cricket board criticised the ICC on Thursday for plans that are set to exclude lower-tier teams from the 2015 World Cup, saying a reduced, 10-country tournament would be "a farce" and bad for the game's development.
Cricket Kenya chief executive Tom Sears told The Associated Press in a phone interview that ICC Associate nations like Kenya, Ireland, Netherlands and Canada had been given "no guarantee" by cricket's ruling body at a meeting in Dubai this week that they would be included in the qualifying process for 2015.
A former head of English county side Derbyshire, Sears said the World Cup in Australia and New Zealand in four years' time could be a "closed shop," open only to the 10 test-playing teams.
"It could go either way and there is still a chance there won't be a qualifying process," Sears told the AP before he caught a flight from Kenya to World Cup co-host India. "A 10-team tournament makes it a farce," he said. "If you limit the numbers, it just makes it harder for the smaller countries to develop. We need to play at World Cups to improve. How can you call it a World Cup if we're not given the chance?"
It has been agreed in principle, according to the International Cricket Council, that 2015 will be a 10-team event - down from the 14 countries in the tournament which opens on Saturday. However, the ICC maintains that Associate countries have not been removed from the process and will have a chance to qualify. The ICC is likely to finalise the qualifying process at a board meeting in April, following the World Cup.
The 10 test nations qualified automatically for the 2011 World Cup, while Kenya, Ireland, Netherlands and Canada won the remaining four places through a playoff system. Sears said the decision to reduce the number of countries was still "about money, primarily," and not just about reducing the duration of the six-week tournament - which has been criticised as too long. Kenya became the only non-test playing nation to reach the World Cup semifinals in 2003, while Ireland pulled off a major shock to beat Pakistan in 2007.
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