Fazeer Mohammed — Is Windies Getting Shafted By ICC?

The International Cricket Council (ICC) is not only responsible for the organization and governance of cricket’s major international tournaments, but also appoints the umpires and referees that officiate at all sanctioned Test matches.

The organization was founded over a hundred years ago with England, Australia, and South Africa as its original member.

However, today, its membership has grown to include 104 members — 12 Full Members that play Test matches and 92 Associate Members.

Part of the ICC mandate is to set Future Tours Program (FTP), that is future tour schedules for its members. This includes the World Cup — the international championship of One Day International cricket.

The next World Cup is scheduled to take place in England, Wales, in 2019.

The ICC Future Tours Program (FTP) is set with the objective of each team playing each other at least once at home and once away over a period of 10 years.

If the cricket boards of two individual countries reach an agreement, they can play more than two series. If a team doesn’t want to travel to a set country for a bilateral series due to security reasons, then, by the mutual agreement of the respective boards, that series can be shifted to a neutral venue.

That said, the recent FTP program set to run from 2019-2023, has drawn the ire of the Trinidadian journalist and out-spoken Caribbean cricket commentator Fazeer Mohammed.

He urged the local cricket community not be fooled by the recently announced Future Tours Program (FTP).

Speaking on Jamaica’s Hitz 92 FM’s Sports Grill program recently, Mohammed said the schedule will not improve the game, especially the longer format for smaller territories like the West Indies.

“The West Indies are going to play a lot of international cricket; not a lot of test cricket but a lot of One-Dayers and T20s so on the surface, it would appear as if we’ve worked an excellent deal to be second only to India in the amount of cricket they are going to play over the next five years,” he said.

He argued that these numbers do not augur well for Windies cricket development and rob the Caribbean team of playing premium game – Test Cricket.

He added, “Inside these numbers, you will see a limited amount of test cricket that is not going to give us the opportunity to develop to be really competitive once again at test level.”
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