Is Full Member Status Worth It?

The pinnacle of cricket in the minds of most who follow the sport is test cricket, but unlike the elite tier of any other international sport, it’s an extremely closed shop. Aspiring cricket countries have long sought the honour of joining the club of test playing nations, but is it really worth the trouble?

No other international sport applies such limitations to which members of its governing body are allowed to compete at the highest level. International football involving San Marino holds the same status as games involving Brazil, but only 12 teams are permitted to play test cricket. This creates a sense of elitism around the test game, but even for the select few countries admitted into this elite club, there is still nothing close to a level playing field.

Ireland’s journey into the test match arena distinctly highlights the issues with process. Since gaining test status and making their bow in 2018 against Pakistan, Ireland have only been presented with the opportunity to play seven further tests, for a total of eight matches in more than five years, and two of those were essentially pre-Ashes warm up games for England, in both 2019 and 2023. Whilst they got their first test win back in March against Afghanistan, the “honour” of becoming a full ICC member seems to have been more of a detriment to the strength of Irish cricket.

There is no grace period presented to the players of new test nations. Once Ireland were granted that status, their players had to decide between playing for their country or continuing to play for the English county sides that have helped develop their careers, and following the collapse of Ireland’s own first class structure in 2019, budding Irish test players only have a chance of honing their first class skills by getting signed as overseas players at English counties. County sides are only able to field two overseas players in first class matches, so those spots are hard to come by.

Players from associate nations such as the Netherlands and Scotland, on the other hand, are free to play in county cricket without the counties having to use up an overseas spot, provided the player in question qualifies as English through their heritage or residence (by obtaining settled status), whilst still qualifying to play for their country. This allows them to continue to develop in both white and red-ball cricket at the highest domestic level. Any player choosing to play for Ireland, a full member nation, cannot qualify as a local player through residence nor heritage, hence Tim Murtagh, an Englishman with Irish roots, making the decision to play for Middlesex and forego his Ireland career a few years back. Both the Netherlands and Scotland seem to have surpassed Ireland in white-ball internationals of late.

So the only real benefit Ireland have seen from gaining full member status is the honour of playing test cricket, but they have still only had the chance to play eight tests. If the ICC is to stick to its closed-shop, members-only approach to who can and can’t play test cricket, it has to do better when it comes to gradually integrating new members into the test arena.

To have any hope of achieving this, there would have to be an allowance of five-to-ten years for the players from new test nations to continue playing domestic cricket in established first class competitions without having to be classed as overseas players by default, and guarantees of, at minimum, five tests per year in the Future Tours Programme. And not just one-off matches used as warm-ups for the bigger sides. Without such changes, it is very hard to find sufficient reason for teams to seek full member status in the future.

The fact that Ireland, Afghanistan and Zimbabwe aren’t even included in the World Test Championship, along with being presented with such minimal opportunities to play the format, makes test status appear even more meaningless.

An obvious solution, if the ICC wants to keep the WTC limited to nine teams, is to set up a second WTC tier (say, Ireland, Afghanistan and Zimbabwe joined by Scotland, the Netherlands, Namibia, Papua New Guinea, the USA and Nepal), with a ‘one-up-one-down’ promotion/relegation system similar to the County Championship. The second tier could even be limited to two/three match series of four day tests. Players of teams that only gained test status in the last ten years would remain eligible to player in the domestic first class competitions of other nations without being classed as overseas provided they qualify. The playing field then may, eventually, begin to level out.

Unfortunately, it’s doubtful that this will ever happen. The ICC, and by extension the BCCI, appear to be more than happy to let test cricket stagnate, as long as matches involving England, India and Australia continue to make money. The admission of Ireland and Afghanistan, as well as whichever the next “lucky” countries to be admitted to the test arena may be, serves as nothing more than a ceremonial gesture of expansion, rather than a real attempt to expand the most historic and prestigious format of cricket.