ICC's letter to Ireland: 'You now have the chance to play Tests. Happy?'

After the ICC sent out its press release announcing that the winner of the ICC Intercontinental Cup would get to play four Tests against the lowest ranked Test side, Firstpost came across this letter sent by the ICC to Ireland Cricket. However, its veracity must be taken with a pinch of salt.

Dear Ireland Cricket,

We hope you are happy now. You wanted Test cricket, we have given you Test cricket. And, as a bonus, we have made it meritocratic too. It is the reward for winning the Intercontinental Cup, so you know you’ve earned the right to play with the big boys. Isn’t that wonderful?

Wait! There’s more. We aren’t just offering one Test. Or even two. If you win the tournament, you get to play four Tests – yes four – against the lowest ranked Test side in the world. Two Tests at home and two Test away. For those counting, that means the possibility of up to 10 days of Test cricket in Ireland every four years. That should get the blood pumping.

Oh, sorry, we didn’t mention the every four years bit earlier. Since the Intercontinental Cup takes a while to play, we can’t offer Test cricket every year. Or even every two years. There’s also the small matter of an already packed international calendar. The good thing is very few of the Test countries want to play Zimbabwe or Bangladesh so we saw a window and we opened it so you can jump right through. Every four years. Maybe. If you win.

It might help to think of it as the Cricket Olympics for Associate countries, an Olympics that allows only one of the 37 Associate teams to participate, but still exciting, no?

Being the considerate folk that we are, we have scheduled the first Test Challenge for 2018, which is only three years away. You will have to win the Intercontinental Cup that we will be holding from 2015 to 2017 first, of course, but if you win the tournament and the West Indies get worse, you might even get to play them. Now wouldn’t that be amazing? Ireland playing Test cricket in Barbados or Guyana. Bet you never imagined that would happen.

Of course, you have to keep winning the Intercontinental Cup to keep playing Test cricket (for 20 days total every four years). And even if you beat the 10th ranked Test team, we won’t be giving you Test status so this isn’t a pathway to regular Test cricket. We don’t want you to be confused about that. This is not a promotion/relegation system. The existing Full Members wouldn’t stand for that.

But let’s not focus on the negatives. The glass is half full here. Or a quarter full. Or not completely empty at any rate. Which is the important thing.

The best part is you can now tell your best players they can play Test cricket for Ireland and don’t need to defect to England. Of course, they may still do so if they want to play regular Test cricket, but that just shows they aren’t loyal to Ireland. And you don’t want disloyal cricketers. After all look what happened with England and Kevin Pietersen.

With much love,

The ICC

(In case, you still don’t get it. The letter isn’t real but the sentiment conveyed in the letter is. If the ICC is truly serious about helping the Associate Nations improve, it surely needs to invest more or we could just end up with another Kenya)