ACS Overseas First-Class Annual 2014

first-class matches in India. This year, it was the turn of Sri Lanka to remodel its season, with the result that the number of matches in that country was noticeably reduced from recent years. Overall, however, the number of first-class matches in an overseas season has remained relatively stable: 607 in 2013/14 compared with 622 in 2012/13 and 614 in 2011/12. Following a few queries, it may be helpful if I set out the approach taken in the Annual to players with similar or identical names. This is a recurrent factor in many countries, including India and Bangladesh, but there is no doubt that Pakistan takes pride of place. For instance, this Annual includes no fewer than four Mohammad Naeems; this is unusual, even for Pakistan, but ‘doublets’ abound, and ‘triplets’ are not uncommon. Explanatory notes are added to help users to tell players apart, but a note is not normally supplied when a cricketer continues to represent the same domestic team as previously, unless there is some complicating factor that might cause confusion. 2014 saw a major restructuring of the ICC, which handed much more power to a troika of England, Australia and India. This received intensive coverage in print and elsewhere, to which this Annual has nothing to add. But I should like to make a point about the ICC’s announcement that the winner of the next Intercontinental Cup, due for completion in 2017, will play the bottom-ranked Test side with Test status as the prize. This arrangement raises fundamental issues about the nature of Test cricket, besides creating a significant risk, if it is to be permanent, that countries may be elevated to Test level before they are ready for it (as was arguably the case with Zimbabwe and Bangladesh). A possible approach would be to have a formal ‘candidate’ status, an ante-room as it were, for Test cricket. A candidate nation would not play official Tests, but it would enjoy certain other privileges: it would have full international status for limited-overs cricket; Test countries would be expected not only to visit the candidate nation but also to host tours involving three- or four-day matches against domestic first-class teams, with unofficial ‘Tests’ against the host country; and ICC would extend first-class status to domestic matches within the candidate nation, provided they were of reasonable standard and fulfilled the normal requirements in terms of playing conditions (indeed, it could be a requirement of candidate status that the nation set up a suitable competition). All of this would help to assess the credentials of the candidate nation, including the strength of its domestic cricket, over a reasonable period of perhaps five or ten years before its formal elevation to Test status. And if the candidate nation proved, during this trial period, to be less strong than had been hoped, the loss of candidate status would be altogether less controversial and traumatic than the withdrawal of Test status from a country that turned out to have been prematurely elevated. There may be merit, then, as part of the process of developing a ‘candidate’ status, in extending first-class status to the three-day Inter-Provincial competition recently inaugurated in Ireland, at least on a temporary basis until the end of the next Intercontinental Cup in 2017. To conclude on a practical note, I am sure purchasers will share my satisfaction that despite inflationary pressures it has been possible to keep the price of the Annual unaltered at £65. John Bryant Editor 20 Wilton Square London N1 3DL overseasannual@acscricket.com October 2014 6 Preface