http://www.cricketeurope4.net/DATABASE/A...5325.shtml
Just confirms my findings that the game is dying everywhere else, perhaps with the exception of certain parts of the Indian subcontinent.
Happens.... when crooks and criminals control a governing body.
All the good work which has been done in the 1990s and early 2000s is now lost in many of these nations.
The T20 Qualifiers of 2013 just confirms it. UAE and Hong Kong without any native players won and many deserving teams were thrown out.
Quote:Countries are being encouraged to be creative with these figures and you will all have seen the pronouncements by governing bodies exclaiming massive growth of the games in their respective hinterlands - "Numbers playing the game has more than doubled in the past five years!" - "52,000 now involved in cricket as compared with 27,000 just three years ago" etc.
Quote:Cricketers at grass roots in these countries however paint a very different picture, completely at odds with the supposedly exponential growth.
Quote:Indeed there is disturbing anecdotal evidence that one ICC Region member, who submitted genuine participation numbers - people who they felt would continue playing beyond the one-off school introductory programme - was threatened with a funding cut by the region unless the figures were upwardly revised!
Just confirms my findings that the game is dying everywhere else, perhaps with the exception of certain parts of the Indian subcontinent.
Quote:This is all of course being driven and actively encouraged from Dubai where the ICC mantra has switched from proclamations about the number of countries playing 'our wonderful sport' to headline figures about the number of participants actually playing the game.
Happens.... when crooks and criminals control a governing body.
Quote:There has been little publicity about the savage country cull, but in ICC Europe alone, no fewer than 13 member countries have been excommunicated to 'competition purgatory' and now face an uphill struggle to survive, existing in this competitive vacuum. The countries affected in ICC Europe are Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Estonia, Greece, Hungary, Luxembourg, Malta, Romania, Russia, Slovenia, and Turkey.
All the good work which has been done in the 1990s and early 2000s is now lost in many of these nations.
Quote:There's no doubt that this expulsion will be replicated across the other ICC Regions - with the possible exception of Asia - who in my view quite rightly ignore the edicts from the Ivory Towers in Dubai. It is of course easier for the Asian Region to do this given their financial strength. The other regions aren't perhaps so fortunate struggling to survive on crumbs thrown down from the masters' table.
The T20 Qualifiers of 2013 just confirms it. UAE and Hong Kong without any native players won and many deserving teams were thrown out.
