Is ODI Super League still alive? ICC chairman expresses his views
Jul 08, 2023
Harare [Zimbabwe], July 8 : After Netherlands produced a sensational run in the Cricket World Cup Qualifier, voices have started to rise up from both the Dutch and the ICC for the continuation of the World Cup Super League (WCSL).
This tournament featured the world's top 13 ODI sides in its first edition, which gave Associate teams such as Netherlands a golden opportunity to compete against top opposition regularly.
The ICC chairman Greg Barclay at a press conference in Harare on Friday said that WCSL is a work in progress.
"I don't think there is any doubt that the Super League was hugely helpful in terms of a pathway to Associate countries. The fact that you are seeing some of the performances from the Associate members over here, in large part, was due to the fact that they have had the experience of playing teams ranked above where they are," Barclay said as quoted by ESPNcricinfo.
"It's a work in progress. It's no secret that T20 is in a pretty good place, Test cricket has had a shot in the arm [with the World Test Championship] but maybe we've lost our way a little bit in the 50-over format. We need to address both context and relevance and the experience around that. Is that a re-creation of the Super League or something equivalent? I don't know but I suspect that the answer to that will be yes. We need to do something," Barclay added.
As things stand, the WCSL will not be held during the 2023-2027 ODI cycle, the participants for the 2027 World Cup will be decided based on rankings.
Due to this, it is not crucial for teams to play a fixed number of ODIs in the next four years (the World Cup Super League made provision for 24 ODIs, in eight series of three matches each), along with this the Associate teams are not guaranteed 50-overs cricket against Full Members, this in result has increased the volume of questions surrounding the relevance of bilateral ODI cricket.
This factor was acknowledged by the ICC and Barclay said that "We need to make sure one-day cricket continues to have a following. It's running the risk at the moment of having a lot of irrelevancy in terms of the bilateral arrangements that are made."
