Promotion and relegation is the lifeblood of football, for the sides outside the top flights where there is more to football than winning and of course more than just the old firm, manchester, Merseyside and north london derbies - not to mention Liverpool vs Man Utd. You've considered everybody but the non-Test nations in your analysis, they get mentioned only in the tiers. How does the Ashes improve cricket in Ireland, Kenya, Canada, Scotland, Bermuda etc? Do you think that their participation in the World Cup hasn't improved them and the popularity of the sport in their countries?!? They will inevitably gain more mercenaries, but have become higher profile and if only ICC would pull their heads out their Rses then they would look at more ways to get these teams involved in ALL cricket - if only they'd done it a lot sooner. 1992 there were only Test countries, I think since then there have been 3 or 5 non-Test nations at the World Cup and one or two have disappeared off the radar. Cricket needs to be a worldwide sport, not just as it is now seen as a game for the upper classes, "elitist" and so wrapped up in "the Ashes" and series against buddies that it overlooks what makes up a greater percentage of the globe.
this is where the tier system falls down. Yes, relegation and promotion is very much part of the life blood of football, but at club level. If Wolves get promoted the financial windfall allows them to strengthen their team, if they stay up they can make further plans to strengthen their team. If bangladesh get to tier one by beating zimbabwe, kenya and ireland for example, they can't just revamp their pace attack with guys on the fringes of aussie squad and their batting with guys from the indian squad.
Show me one team that got promoted and managed to make significant progress without a huge transfer campaign. Chelsea are only one of the big 4 because they spent billions, Leeds went bankrupt and now find themselves 2 divisions down. These methods of progress cannot be used to similarly advance test cricket.
furthermore, in football the big players remain the same, there is more of them but this is down to the participation levels in football, it's the premier sport in dozens and dozens of countriest (virtually all of europe and south america, and a few others). You are being compleletly naive if you think cricket will command that participation level, most of europe don't even know what cricket is, all of the americas is the same barring a handful of carribean nations.
I am not english, despite you claiming I was, and in respect to my ashes comment, you may well be right, maybe we should sacrifice things like that for progress. My point is that I'm from scotland, and cricket is a minority sport here, most people here don't even know who tendulkar is. There is simply no way that will change much, maybe in 100 years who knows, but 10? 20? even 30 would be pushing it. Yet we are what, 14th in the rankings? (to compare football we are 45th, and in football we have a fully professional league and can compete on a decent level with every team above us, in cricket we would not be able to beat australia 1 time out of 1000 in a test)
That is how cricket is, low participation outside it's core. I'm afraid we do have to pay most mind to those that actually contribute to the game and in that respect, I think a system that is organised with non-test teams in mind, and could possibly harm current test teams is perhaps way too idealistic.
yep yep that's exactly what it is!
