NEIL MANTHORP: Common thread keeps all cricket together

There is far too much cricket going on around the world to keep up with it all, as has been the case for several years, but there is a common thread binding some extremely different formats and contests together.

The Tamil Naidu Premier League, while no doubt important to those involved, is the outlier.

So, what is the “thread” linking the first Ashes Test in Birmingham, the 50-over World Cup Qualifiers in Harare and Bulawayo, the T20 Africa Continental Cup in Nairobi and the SA A team’s second four-day match against Sri Lanka A in Colombo? Defined pathways.

Kenya beat Botswana by six wickets on Monday to pull within two points of table-topping Uganda as they continue their push for a place in the expanded, 20-team T20 World Cup in the Caribbean and the US. From Italy and Germany in the European League to Japan and Indonesia in the east, there is a structure in place for the lesser-known nations to realise their dreams.

Hardly anybody knew about it before Afghanistan climbed through seven divisions to reach the top flight and, if they did, they probably didn’t believe that a “small” country in which cricket is a quirk for a tiny minority could actually play against the big nations, let alone compete.

And yet it continues to happen, as the early stages of the tournament in Zimbabwe are confirming. It is not a fluke that Oman and Nepal are in that tournament ahead of better-known cricket nations like Namibia and Canada. No team flukes a top-three finish in a league which requires them to play 36 games, which the ICC’s League did. And, after a dismal start, Nepal won 11 of their final 12 games to earn their chance of reaching the World Cup.

The Nepalese posted 290 in the tournament’s opening match and, though hosts Zimbabwe chased the target down for the loss of just two wickets, the confident manner in which they acquitted themselves, matched by the US against the West Indies and surpassed by Oman in their match against the strongly fancied Irish, was a resounding endorsement of both the international structure and the tournament.

Just as ambitious soccer teams (usually with wealthy owners) can earn promotion through the divisions in most democratic countries and believe in their dreams, occasionally even fulfilling them, there is a pathway for even the smallest countries in which cricket is played to reach a World Cup. All the better that the next one, in SA in 2027, will be expanded back to 14 teams.

What they can’t do, of course, is play Test cricket. At least, not as a nation. With Ireland and Afghanistan struggling to play more than a couple of Tests per year, it seems improbable that the status will be conferred on any other nation. Indeed, would they want it? Would Scotland or the UAE want to stage Test matches? Could they? Unlikely.

Many years ago Ernie Els used to bemoan that he, and the majority of the world’s golfers, were ineligible to play in the Ryder Cup. He loved the event and what it did for the game during the peak years of his career. It is one of the reasons he threw something of his time and energy into raising the profile of the President’s Cup but, however good the contest was between the US and the Rest of the World, it just wasn’t the same.

There have been a few SA cricketers over the years with a similar respect/envy for the Ashes. A few over the years took radical steps to challenge their ineligibility, of course, with Allan Lamb and Kevin Pietersen happy to change their national allegiance to create their own little pieces of Ashes history.

The rest will, no doubt, have enjoyed the first four days of the Edgbaston Test from wherever they are wintering, several hundred of them playing club or county cricket in the UK. Then there are those in Colombo where the Ashes are being shown on every television in every bar, restaurant or hotel lobby.

Hopefully none of the SA A team is dreaming of playing in the Ashes but they have as clear a sight of the next best thing as Jersey’s cricketers do of reaching the World Cup. The World Test Championship is defined. They may have the minimum of 12 Test matches over the next two years but, win eight or none of them and they will give themselves the best chance of featuring in the final, the biggest stage available to them.