Miandad to assist Pakistan batsmen again

Javed Miandad is again expected to work with the Pakistan team on their batting skills, after having earlier helped them prepare for the tour of New Zealand and the World Cup. Shahid Afridi and PCB chairman Ijaz Butt have approached Miandad with a request to help a batting line-up that were largely inconsistent in the World Cup, and he has expressed his willingness to do so.

"We are trying to persuade Miandad to help the batsmen," Afridi said, according to AFP. "We realise there are batting problems so we have told Miandad that the country needs him, so hopefully he will accept that role."

Miandad responded by saying that he was always ready to assist the players whenever the need arose. "I thank PCB chairman and Afridi for calling me and requesting help," Miandad told a private television channel.

Miandad, the PCB director-general, has coached Pakistan three times in the past, each association ending in acrimonious circumstances. He was involved in a war of words last year with Ijaz Butt relating to the salary he drew as director-general. Though he worked with the side before the tour of New Zealand he declined to travel with the team, saying that he had full confidence in the abilities of coach Waqar Younis.

Pakistan's batsmen mostly struggled in the World Cup, failing to chase stiff targets against New Zealand and India, and wobbling in their chase of 177 against Australia before prevailing by four wickets. No Pakistan batsman was among the top-20 run-getters in the World Cup, and their strong bowling attack was largely responsible for their run to the semi-final.

Pakistan are to tour West Indies to play a Twenty20 international, five one-dayers and two Tests later this month. 

'An absolute black day for the sport'

Warren Deutrom, the Cricket Ireland chief executive, has slammed the ICC's decision to trim the next World Cup to just the ten Full Members nations, describing it as "nothing short of outrageous".

The 2015 event in Australia and New Zealand will only include the ten Test-playing nations after the ICC decided against a qualification system for the tournament, which means no chance for the likes of Ireland or Netherlands to earn a place. For 2019 there is the prospect of Associates and Affiliates finding a way back in through qualification, but today's decision has effectively frozen them out of the game's showpiece event for eight years.

The decision, while tough on all the Associate nations, is particularly hard on Ireland, who proved themselves to have been a cut above the rest of the second-tier teams during the 2011 event, with a memorable victory over England in Bangalore to add to their scalping of Pakistan on their World Cup debut in 2007. Though they still finished sixth in Group B, they were more consistently competitive than either Bangladesh or Zimbabwe, the two main beneficiaries of today's ICC's decision.

"The conclusion can only be reached that the decisions made today were based purely on the protection of the existing membership entitlements for Full Members and the commercial imperative that a ten-team event delivers nine guaranteed matches for India and England," Deutrom told ESPNcricinfo. "It's nothing short of outrageous. All of the principles by which a decision should have been made in the first instance - which is what's best for the sport and what's acting in the best interests of all 105 members - have clearly been abandoned today.

"And after such a terrific event, and the wonderful occasion of the final, where the sport was incredible and regarded in such glowing terms around the world, I'm afraid this is an absolute black day for the sport. It's a genuinely awful decision that has been reached."

Scarcely three weeks have elapsed since Ireland were the toast of world cricket, with their successful run-chase against England, led by Kevin O'Brien's record-breaking hundred, destined to remain as one of the abiding memories in World Cup history. Boyd Rankin, one of the players who featured in that game, posted his thoughts on Twitter. "Thanks ICC!! What does Irish cricket got to do?? Shambles!!"

Ireland also fought hard against West Indies and Bangladesh, and Deutrom believed his team had done enough at least to force the ICC into some sort of dialogue. "It's a betrayal of the principles of sport and the principles of meritocracy and a level playing field," he said.

"Surely the principle of sport is that if you are good enough you should have the chance to be involved. You have an Associate member who has been out-ranking a Full Member [Zimbabwe] for most of the last four years, who has got through to the Super Eights of the 2007 World Cup, and who has been genuinely been recognised as having performed even better at this one, yet on the back of those performances it has been seen fit to reduced the number of participants at the World Cup."

Although ICC have offered an expanded World Twenty20 in place of 2015 World Cup places, Deutrom has serious concerns about the impact on the sport below Test level. Part of Ireland's success comes from the generous support of sponsors and sports funding, but without the major prize of a World Cup to aim for, the product could be less valuable.

"It's difficult to expect sponsors to remain on board and the government to continue to offer support when the question they could quite legitimately ask is 'why should we support you when your own sport won't?," he said. "High Performance countries would regard themselves as proper cricket countries who play three forms of the game. The decision here, effectively, is saying the other 95 members out of 105 should go away and concentrate on 20-over cricket."

ICC vows to investigate ticketing process

The ICC has acknowledged shortcomings in the ticketing process for the World Cup, and has vowed to investigate it thoroughly and come back prepared for the next world event, especially when the demand for tickets is high. An otherwise successful World Cup was marred by the inconvenience caused to especially those who bought tickets online, and also reports of black-marketing of tickets. The website selling tickets for the final also crashed because of the huge traffic. There were even baton assaults by the police on queues of ticket-seekers in India.

Haroon Lorgat, the ICC's CEO, said after the meeting of its executive board that ticketing was one of the more important lessons the ICC has learnt from this event. "There is certainly something on the ticketing process that we need to consider for future events, particularly where there is such a high demand for tickets," Lorgat said. "Other than that I do not want to at this stage think about the detail. Overall I am very impressed with the way the event went."

Lorgat promised a through look-in into what went wrong this time, and what changes need to be made. "The board has today agreed with the proposition that we will do a full investigation on the process [by which] tickets were handled, sold and distributed," he said. "Once we get the result of that investigation we will determine what sort of action will be necessary and what sort of process we should install in the future."

As expected the concern lies with the events held in the subcontinent, where the huge demand for tickets dictates that the process be handled with due care. For the bigger matches, there have been reports of black-marketing. Lorgat said the ICC wouldn't mind legal recourse if those black-marketers have been arrested. "We will certainly not condone that sort of behaviour. We don't accept it. If there is any arrest that has been made, we will proceed with that."