"I have worked in the ICC for the best part of eight or nine years, first as part of the management and now sitting on one of the two senior committees and I can say that today I am ashamed to be part of that apparatus."
Warren Deutrom, CEO Cricket Ireland on the ICC decision to exclude Ireland from the 2015 World Cup.
Anyone who has dealt with Deutrom will know that he is not a man for over-exuberance.
The VIP box in the M Chinnaswamy Stadium in Bangalore on March 2 exulted when John Mooney’s drive through midwicket hit the boundary, and Ireland completed the greatest shock in World Cup history with victory over England.
However, a beaming Deutrom limited himself to a few hearty handshakes, before getting straight back to work in fielding the hundreds of congratulatory phone calls from sponsors and stakeholders in the game.
So what prompted so canny a political operator as Deutrom to utter such angry words on Monday, when the ICC announced that Ireland were to be excluded from the 2015 World Cup?
For the first time, Setanta Sports can exclusively reveal the timeline behind the ICC’s betrayal of Ireland and the other 94 Associate Nations. Setanta Sports understands that England voted against Ireland, in supporting the proposal that the 2015 World Cup would be limited to the ten Full Member countries.
Ireland were not represented in the meeting of the ICC Executive board which took the decision on Monday in Mumbai, with the Associate Members, represented by Bermuda, Singapore and Scotland, joining the ten Full Member countries.
Setanta Sports can reveal that that the 13-strong meeting split into three factions, with a group of major cricketing nations that included India, Australia and England proposing a ten-team World Cup which would mirror the successful 1992 World Cup, where the winner and three runners-up of a round-robin format would progress to the semi-finals.
This formula would guarantee that the financial powerhouse of the game, India, would be guaranteed nine games, with the consequent huge TV revenues that would inevitably flow back to the ICC.
The ICC’s TV deal with ESPN ends at the end of the 2015 World Cup, and the organisation is keen to keep viewing figures as high as possible in order to secure as lucrative a deal as possible in that renegotiation. That, in reality, means as many top teams playing each other as possible in the group stage. Post-tournament ratings from India suggest that viewing figures for The Netherlands game with India were half the amount of the most popular group stage game, against England in Bangalore. Interestingly, however, India’s game with Ireland attracted 84 percent of that peak total, on the back of their win over England four days before.
Another bloc of Full Members were keen on a 12-team tournament. These included Zimbabwe and Bangladesh, who were keen on guaranteeing their own participation even if their results over the next four years dropped. However, they were persuaded by the game's powerhouses that a ten-team Full Member only World Cup would be in their best interests, leaving representatives of the Associate Nations completely isolated in the meeting.
It is not even known whether the ICC Executive board took a formal vote on the proceedings, as the ten Full Members were in agreement in the meeting, and they only needed seven supporters to push through the format change.
Cricket Ireland’s betrayal has been exacerbated by the mixed messages given to them by the ICC, when the board postponed the planned February meeting on the format changes for 2015, until after the final of the 2011 tournament.
Cricket Ireland understood from that postponement that the ICC were waiting to see how the Associate Nations performed in India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, and were therefore confident that their on-field success would smooth the path for their participation in 2015.
“That gave us the indication that they were going to use the evidence of the World Cup to determine what decision would be reached,” Deutrom told Setanta Sports.
“There were some one-sided matches in the World Cup, but not just amongst the Associate Nations. England, Zimbabwe and Bangladesh were all beaten by nine or ten wickets! And conversely, Ireland performed extremely well, in beating a Full Member and being competitive in all its other matches. The Associates trusted that the evidence would carry strongly in any consideration. At no stage did we ever believe that they would make such a decision, so soon after a successful World Cup. There is an element of disbelief at the decision.”
Deutrom is determined to challenge the ICC’s ruling, and will be meeting with representatives of the 94 other Associate Nations in order to examine their future options.
“We will now go away and meet with the representatives of the Associate Nations. We will look at whether ICC has acted in concert with its memorandum and articles. There may be nothing we can do, but we must try.”