Historic East Asia-Pacific meeting unveils future World Cup format

The future World Cup qualifying path for Associate and Affiliate countries had its first official airing at the inaugural ICC East Asia-Pacific conference in Auckland earlier this month.

While relating only to the ICC's East Asia-Pacific region, the meeting unveiled the method Associate and Affiliate countries world wide will follow to qualify for World Cup 2007 in the West Indies.

In the case of the East Asia-Pacific region, the World Cup qualifying process will start with separate tournaments in the Pacific and then Asia for Affiliate and New Territories members of the ICC.

The Pacific tournament will be held in Auckland in January, 2001, followed by the East Asia tournament in Hong Kong in September, 2001.

The winners of each tournament will progress to the next stage, meeting at a similar event involving the Associate countries of the region.

The number of teams to qualify from that tournament for a streamlined ICC Trophy will be determined when the ICC decides how many World Cup positions will be allocated to each development region for Associate and Affiliate countries.

The three most positive aspects of the format are these:

• In theory anyway, it pits countries of a similar standard against each other
• Ensures that all ICC members get a crack at World Cup qualification
• For the first time, Affiliate members have a regular competition structure

Another major development was the drafting of operations plans for 2000 and five year development plans for each country.

The ICC's popular East Asia-Pacific Development Officer, Mr. Andrew Eade, saw another side to the conference as its major achievement.

"The conference was an unqualified success," Mr. Eade said.

"While many agenda items were covered the general feedback was that the best aspect was the opportunity to meet other delegates and discuss mutual problems/solutions. None of the delegates had met each other before (with one or two exceptions)."

Another initiative generated from the conference was the idea of a Regional Development Resource Catalogue.

This would list all the relevant resources countries may need and specify where to get them and how much they would cost. Work is underway now on compiling this.