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Originally Posted by al Furqaan
To be fair 3 out of 5 is not that impressive given the strenghts of the opposition they play. Granted, they can get pushed by Afghanistan so if thats the 2 thats missing then its totally fine. But when you compete with Namibia and Scotland you should be winning 5 times out of 5 to make a case for Test status.
That being said, I fully support Ireland's Test bid and Afghanistan's by 2020 as well. If Pakistan can play all matches away, so too can the Afghans.
Scotland will probably take the 2nd auto spot for WC15. That leaves Afghanistan, and Netherlands to take the final two spots via the WC Qualifying tournament in NZ. Only Canada and Kenya offer resistance there, and neither of them is good enough. Nepal has qualified for the qualifier, I believe its their first time ever. Definitely rooting for Afghanistan and Nepal since they're from our neighborhood. Don't care about any of the other teams after those two, until the US starts to qualify.
Kee bolen Razab bhai...all these great players in the Bay Area leagues and US can't even qualify for the WC Qualifiers ever??? What is that about?
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keep in mind this is between the period of 2004-2013. so ireland weren't necessarily at the standard they are now back in 2004/05. admittedly losing to afghanistan in the last event was a bit of a glitch but afghanistan are rapidly rising and now a very good team, also the nerthlands are a strong associate team and even scotland have been one of the best during the life of this tournament. associate teams are playing at a higher standard now than they've ever been. if they had lost to namibia or nepal or bermuda then sure that's a big loss but scotland and afghanistan (the 2 teams that have beaten them in that tournament) are top associate teams, it just shows that associate level cricket is improving it's standard. let's see if they win the current tournament, if they don't then it's really quite a black mark on the record when discussing if they should get test status or not.
point is somewhat valid though, because you would expect any current test nation to beat any associate team 5 out of 5 times in FC cricket. but then we have to remember these teams aren't test standard and it's unlikely they will reach test standard until they actually get involved in test standard cricket. i think what we need to look for in associate teams are ones that dominate consistently for a good period (minimum 5 years if not more) and that compete well in the limited ODI chances they get. i know it's a different format but really there is currently no other way (unless test teams are willing to play FC matches against associates) to gauge where the associate teams are at, all we have is there performance in this tournament, the world cups and the odd few one-day games that they do get against the test nations.
perhaps when an associate team seems to rise above the rest as ireland are currently doing, then perhaps there should be a couple of unofficial test series against true test nations. that way everyone will know whether they are ready or not.