The joy of Ireland's thumping of the West Indies should not be mistaken for the joy that greets a regular underdog triumph. This was not – it should be made abundantly clear – an underdog triumph at all.
Many, not least Ireland themselves, went into this game believing the Irish would win. That was evident from the fairly muted nature of their celebrations.
They have been this good for a while. This was beginning a campaign as they wanted, not its high point.
And such have been the shenanigans in the Caribbean during the past six months that no matter how Ireland were faring, the West Indies were always likely to slip up.
No, much of the joy was derived from the result showing up the game’s administrators for the callous fools they are.
On the one side were Ireland, an example of both the ambition and the apathy of international cricket’s efforts to develop the sport beyond its conventional geography.
The International Cricket Council (ICC) has done much to help Ireland become what they are.
But they have also prevented them from becoming what they could be, which is one of cricket’s main actors and not a continuing, peripheral extra.
Now, under the Big Three, the ICC will happily cut back on development and ensure that even if Ireland do somehow make it, nobody will be able to follow in their footsteps.
The next World Cup, reduced to 10 teams from this year’s 14 will, at best, have two associates. The 2011 World Cup also had four associates. The next may not have any.
The top two associates will play a qualifying tournament with the two worst full members for two places. Everything in the preceding four years will have worked to the full members’ advantage – access to greater money, better facilities and, above all, as full members, they will have played more competitive matches.
For Papua New Guinea, Nepal, Afghanistan and the UAE, that is a disincentive.
On the other side are the West Indies, a vivid representation of the complacency and negligence of mainstream cricket administration.
The West Indies Cricket Board has rarely helped itself, but it now operates in a time when the sport has no independent, central authority.
More than ever, they are hustling amid a collection of self-interests inside a dangerously skewed marketplace. They have a dispute with a member board, a dispute for which the judge, jury and executioner will – by dint of its power – be the same board. It does not bode well.
If there were any element of surprise in the result, it probably was for the gusto with which Ireland chased and, partly, the dwindling residual surprise of seeing a 300-plus total being chased down outside the subcontinent. This was an ice-cool chase, other than a late minor wobble.
Ireland mean business. They still retain a yearning and eagerness. In contrast, there are decaying, apathetic full member sides around them.
If Ireland do not show up at least one more big side and walk into the quarter-finals, consider that to be a true and proper surprise.
osamiuddin@thenational.ae
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