ICC Intercontinental Cup and Shield

The main problem faced by the players from Associate countries is that, being amateurs, they cannot afford to take part in more than two or three multi-day games a year and that number is insufficient to develop skills much beyond good club or Minor County level. The performance of Scotland and Ireland against English counties showed that their batsmen could defend their wickets and play a few shots against the really bad balls but as soon as they tried to accelerate the scoring rate, they got out. Similarly, the bowlers could produce line and length for a few overs but could not maintain it over a long period of time. One of the positive outcomes of one-day cricket has been that batsmen have to score runs and bowlers have to maintain line because of the stricter interpretation of what constitutes a wide ball. There is no doubt that taking part in the English one-day domestic competitions has greatly improved the standard of Irish and Scottish cricket which is reflected in their greater success rate. In those competitions between 1980 and 2009 for Ireland and 1980 and 2010 for Scotland, both teams have won 12% of their matches. The importance of multi-day cricket, however, is to ensure that increases in run-making ability are built on solid foundations of sound technique and that bowlers learn the art of varying pace, flight and length. The Intercontinental Cup was therefore, to some extent, an experiment in testing whether cricketers nursed on a diet of one-day matches could also play effective multi-day cricket. If the team records of the Associate countries barely support their first-class status, the performance of individual players provides a much stronger case. Many Associate countries have been able to produce players of first-class calibre. In 1902, W.G.Grace recognised the abilities of Bob Lambert (Ireland) and Carsten Posthuma (Netherlands) and invited them to play for London County in first-class matches under his captaincy. Since the 1880s, Scotland and to a lesser extent Ireland have suffered a continuous loss of their best players to English counties, the most well-known being Gregor Macgregor, Ian Peebles, Paul Gibb and Mike Denness from Scotland and, most recently, Ireland’s Eoin Morgan. Other players who developed successful county careers prior to the early 2000s include James Allan, Brian Hardie, John Blain, Gavin Hamilton and Dougie Brown from Scotland and Dermott Monteith and Ed Joyce from Ireland. There were also those players who came from overseas with first-class experience and qualified for their new countries, most notably Asim Butt for Scotland and Afzal (Alf) Masood and Naseer Shaukat for Ireland. Added to these are those cricketers who it is generally recognised could have pursued a first-class career but for various reasons chose not to do so. These include John Kerr, James Brown and the Rev James Aitchison from Scotland and James Boucher, Simon Corlett and Alec O’Riordan from Ireland. Scotland and Ireland were not the only Associate countries, however, with top-class cricketers. Bas Zuiderent, André van Troost, Paul-Jan Bakker and Roland Lefebvre from The Netherlands and Øle Mortensen from Denmark played successfully for English counties. From Canada, John Davison played first-class cricket in Australia and Ian Billcliff and Geoff Barnett in New Zealand. Basharat Hassan from Kenya had a long career with Nottinghamshire and Jawahir Shah, Steve Tikolo and Ravindu Shah were all rated by other cricketers as being of first-class standard. Then there is the large number of players who have represented the United Arab Emirates after previous, though often limited, first-class experience in India, Pakistan or Sri Lanka. Although many readers would undoubtedly either add or subtract names to or from this list, there can be little doubt that in 2004 there were a large number of first-class players amongst the leading Associate countries. The Intercontinental Cup was definitely built on a strong foundation of individual players of first-class standard among the Associate countries. Although, based on team records, assigning it first-class was marginal at best, that status was vital for its recognition as a serious competition by both the Associate and Full-Member countries of the ICC. Even so, before the 2004 tournament began, concerns were still being expressed about its first-class status, whether the players, used to a diet of one-day internationals, would be able to adjust to three-day cricket and whether the difference in standard across the twelve countries would lead to many mismatches and performances which would make a mockery of cricket’s first-class records. Some of these fears seemed justified when, in the first four matches of the competition, there were two instances of bowlers taking nine wickets in an innings, one of whom, John Davison, took 6 Introduction