Team Oman ready for road to ICC World Cup

MUSCAT — Team Oman’s road to the ICC Cricket World Cup starts today as the Sultanate cricketers join five other teams in the ICC World Cricket League Division 2 in Windhoek, Namibia. Team Oman, after good warm-up games in South Africa and after their title triumph in the ACC Tewnty20 Cup recently, are hoping to make the grade of booking a place in the ICC World Cup qualifiers to be played in the United Arab Emirates in 2009. Oman, as well as hosts Namibia, Argentina, Denmark, Uganda and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) will battle it out over a week of action at three venues around the city. At stake are four places in the ICC Cricket World Cup Qualifier (formerly the ICC Trophy) in the UAE in 2009, the tournament that will determine which of the leading ICC associate and affiliate teams will go to the ICC Cricket World Cup in the Asian sub-continent two years later. For five of the teams in Windhoek, it is a road they have travelled down before as Oman, Denmark, Namibia, Uganda and the UAE all played in the ICC Trophy in 2005 but failed to reach the Caribbean showpiece. However, Namibia (2003 in Southern Africa) and the UAE (1996 in India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka) have both reached the World Cup so they should know exactly what is at stake and what sort of rewards are on offer to the successful sides. Oman may be the only country which lacks proper cricket infrastructure, but the cricketers of the Sultanate have performed well despite the handicap. However, there have been discussions on how better Team Oman could have been if they had the proper infrastructure to benefit from. The day of Oman boasting a proper infrastructure for cricket is not far off, but one hopes the talented team fight their way all through to the 2011 World Cup. The new kid on the block is Argentina, a country basking in the glory of its success in the recent IRB Rugby World Cup where its side reached the semifinals and finished third. The cricketers have done just as well in many senses because, as late replacements for the United States in the ICC WCL Division 3 event earlier this year in Darwin, they were not expected to make many headlines. On paper, at least, the likes of Fiji, Hong Kong, Papua New Guinea and the Cayman Islands all looked likely finalists alongside the fancied Uganda, and there were also Italy and Tanzania to consider. But Argentina proceeded to rip up the formbook and won through to the final before losing out to Uganda, the other side to earn promotion from that event which gave both line-ups their tickets to Windhoek. It will be fascinating to see if the South American side can continue their journey or whether they will get stopped in their tracks by some of the more experienced sides on show. In his explanation to the media on the the significance of the ICC WCL and how the Windhoek tournament fits in, ICC Global Development Manager Matthew Kennedy said: “The idea of the WCL is to give each of the ICC’s 91 associate and affiliate Members a clearly defined pathway to progress and develop in world cricket. “Apart from Division 1, which involves the top six associate sides, the next best teams from the ICC Trophy 2005 have been allocated to Division 2 and 3 events along with the top teams from each of five regional qualifying events. It means that regular global One-day cricket opportunities are no longer confined to just the top sides in the LG ICC ODI Championship table and this tournament in Windhoek is an example of that.”