||||Who will be the eleventh test playing team|||

[IndYeah]

Originally Posted by Tigers_eye
Ireland is not Bangladesh. They are light years forward than what BD was in 1999.

We basically didn't have any structure before 2005. All Dhaka based club cricket and eye-washed regional picnic cricket.

With the status, (1) they get the funding to make a better infra structure where it would produce the Mustafizs, the Sabbirs, the Sarkars, the Taskins from the U-15s, U-17s, U-19s, Academies.

(2) They would gain the necessary experience to compete with the Aussies and the English.

One game here, one game there; 3 games in the WC if they qualify, wouldn't improve their standard. This would mean a permanent stop in the English poaching as well. (Morgan, Rankin etc.)

By all means, top ranked associates should get a fat bump in funding. And a lot more short format games - all I'm saying is, test status should not be the means to give them that. That should be the final step in development. ICC needs to create a structured pathway with Test status as the last milestone.

Bear in mind, just giving a team money and more games is not automatically going to make them a regular cricket playing nation - the game needs to have developed sustainable roots in the country - with a sizeable player pool and fan-base - both of native birth and origin. You can't just suck at the ICC teat for funding - a majority of it has to be self-generated - from domestic cricket. But the ICC should really help these countries create such a self-sustaining base - kind-of like a venture captial investor. At the moment, they are acting like 19th Century Maharajas, doling out a few dollars here and there, with no proper planning and follow-through.