By It is extremely unlikely that the West Indies or Zimbabwe would lose their Test and ODI status in the foreseeable future. Here are the main points:
While some say that Zimbabwe should lose its Test status owing to poor performance and governance difficulties, the overall agreement is that doing so would be damaging to the country’s cricket development.The ICC is more inclined to assist Zimbabwe’s improvement efforts. The West Indies are a founding member of Test cricket and one of the most successful teams in one-day international history. There have been no real debates regarding the West Indies losing their status.
In 2022-23, the West Indies toured Zimbabwe for one-day internationals and failed to qualify for the Cricket World Cup for the first time, losing to Zimbabwe.However, this outcome alone does not jeopardize their ODI status. In recent years, the ICC has expanded the number of sides possessing Test and ODI status, including Ireland, Afghanistan, and others. Removing existing teams would contradict this trend.
The involvement of the ICC in determining the status of tests for countries and teams
The International Cricket Council (ICC) is responsible for overseeing and governing Test cricket, including awarding and revoking Test status to cricket teams. Here are the important elements about the ICC’s role in assigning and deleting Test status:
Granting Test Status: * The ICC organizes and governs international cricket, including giving Test status to cricket teams. This status is often granted to teams who meet certain criteria, such as having a strong domestic cricket structure and participating in a sufficient number of Test matches.
Relegation Model: * The ICC World Test Championship (WTC) is considering implementing a relegation system. This plan would include a relegation system in which the bottom two WTC teams would compete in a qualification against teams from the ICC Intercontinental Cup to assure their continued participation in the WTC. However, this concept has not been adopted due to a number of logistical and financial problems, including the high costs of hosting Test matches and a lack of interest from financially disadvantaged countries.
Kraigg Braithwaite giving a reply to Rodney Hogg who told West Indies are pathetic and hopeless.
— Mufaddal Vohra (@mufaddal_vohra) January 28, 2024
– Test cricket at its best…!!! 🔥 pic.twitter.com/QSvNxkGHbS
The ICC’s Role in Test Cricket: * The International Cricket Council (ICC) oversees playing conditions, bowling reviews, and other international cricket laws, including Test matches. They also assign international umpires and match referees to oversee all sanctioned Test matches.
In conclusion, while both sides have battled at times, the West Indies and Zimbabwe are well-established as Test and ODI-playing nations. Losing that status would necessitate either a huge governance failure or extended, awful on-field performance, neither of which appears to be forthcoming based on current knowledge.
