Irish captain says move is 'joke and embarrassment'

IRELAND captain William Porterfield has branded the decision to exclude associate nations from the 2015 World Cup as "an embarrassment" and "a joke" and has warned it could kill the game in non-Test playing countries.

The ICC executive board had been considering overturning a previous decision to cut the number of teams at the World Cup from 14 to 10, with a compromise of 12 up for discussion in Mumbai yesterday. Instead they reaffirmed their decision to make it a 10-team tournament and dealt the likes of Ireland, Holland and Canada a further blow with the revelation there would be no chance for associate members to qualify in four years' time.

Porterfield said: "It's an absolute disgrace and I don't know how they can even comprehend doing this. We have done everything they asked of us over the last few years in terms of restructuring Irish cricket and I can't come to terms with how they can just shut us out, do away with the qualification period and then try and call this a World Cup.

"We are currently ranked 10th, ahead of Zimbabwe, and there is no reason we can't move up another position, if not two, by the next World Cup. Instead, the door has been closed in our face. It is an embarrassment.

"I don't know what else we had to do in the World Cup, we held our own against the full members, we beat England, we got the fastest ever hundred. For them to turn around and throw that back in our face a few weeks later is an absolute joke."

The Warwickshire opener rejected the notion that an expanded 16-team World Twenty20 would help soften the blow to associate nations. "They say it's a compensation but I can't agree with that because it is every player's dream to play at and win a World Cup," he added.