History
The World Cricket League was devised by the ICC to provide regular one-day international cricket to Associate and Affiliate countries as well as to provide a qualification route into the ICC World Cup Qualifier (formerly ICC Trophy) and from there to World Cup. Despite some scepticism, it has been a great success, allowing countries to work their way to the top of the pile on merit. This was best highlighted by the rapid ascendency of Afghanistan from Division Five to Division One in under two years.
The competition is divided into nine divisions (it was originally five) with promotion and relegation between them. Each division takes places in one venue over a week in a round-robin league with play-off places resulting from there culminating in a final between the top two and ranking finals for the remaining teams.
The ICC says that competition is about more than just the top Associate teams. "It is a five-division structure designed to afford teams of various standards the opportunity to play regular one-day cricket against similarly ranked opponents regardless of where in the world they are located. It will also ensure that the qualifying pathway for the World Cup is open to the majority of the 91 ICC Associate and Affiliate members."
The first event – the WCL Division 1 competition involving the top six Associates – took place in Nairobi in January/February 2007 and was won by hosts Kenya with Scotland the runners-up. The two sides qualified for the ICC World Twenty in South Africa later in the year.
Read more about this topic: World Cricket League
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“In history the great moment is, when the savage is just ceasing to be a savage, with all his hairy Pelasgic strength directed on his opening sense of beauty;—and you have Pericles and Phidias,—and not yet passed over into the Corinthian civility. Everything good in nature and in the world is in that moment of transition, when the swarthy juices still flow plentifully from nature, but their astrigency or acridity is got out by ethics and humanity.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“As I am, so shall I associate, and so shall I act; Caesar’s history will paint out Caesar.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“I believe that in the history of art and of thought there has always been at every living moment of culture a “will to renewal.” This is not the prerogative of the last decade only. All history is nothing but a succession of “crises”Mof rupture, repudiation and resistance.... When there is no “crisis,” there is stagnation, petrification and death. All thought, all art is aggressive.”
—Eugène Ionesco (b. 1912)