ICC Intercontinental Cup and ICC Intercontinental Shield by Roy Morgan is a meticulously compiled scorecard and match report of every match from the inaugural 2004 competition to the 2009-10 competition. There are statistical analyses of each of the competitions. In addition, there are chapters on Countries, Players, Umpires and Grounds.

Though one might have thought that scorecards and stats were readily available on various websites, these apparently contained frequent inconsistencies and inaccuracies. 

The book offers itself as the book of record of the competition. In the preface it explains the methodology the author used to overcome difficulties presented by, for example, players with Malay names and the Pashto names of Afghanistan's cricketers. In the light of such painstaking efforts to achieve consistent accuracy it is perhaps unfortunate then that Gary Wilson's birthplace is described as Dundonald, County Roscommon! 

In the introduction to the book an attempt is made to evaluate the competition in terms of developing cricket as a truly global game. And this is the most disappointing aspect of the book for it adopts the paradigm of viewing this issue which is conventional amongst Full Members of the ICC.

That paradigm is to take the position that there an elite group of cricket nations (Full Members of the ICC) and then there is the rest, the onus is on who, to prove themselves 'worthy' to become Full Members.

There are several problems with this perspective, not the least of which is how exactly does as aspiring nation prove itself 'worthy'?  There is no clear path with objective criteria laid out as to how a non Full Member can become a Full Member. 

Secondly how can a non-Full Member country (such as Ireland) prove it is better than Full Members such as Bangladesh, Zimbabwe, West Indies, Sri Lanka, New Zealand etc unless it is afforded the opportunity to play them regularly in one day and multiday cricket both at home and away?

There is also the issue of Finance where Full Members have access to huge funding from the ICC relative to the Associate and Affiliate Members.

In Morgan's book, the analysis of the performances of the participant countries in terms of assessing their 'worthiness' to compete with Full Members is largely irrelevant. Morgan argues for instance that ....'the  (IC) finals have all been one-sided, the closest being a win by six wickets. The one Intercontinental Shield Final was also a six-wicket outcome. These have certainly not been an advert for high quality closely-fought cricket.' 

Now, since when did playing closely fought matches become an indication of a country's ability to play Test cricket? Did the West Indies not overwhelmingly dominate the Test match arena in the 1980s and early '90s? How many Test Series in Australia since the mid-'90s until the last couple of years been closely fought? During the English season just ended the number 1 and 2 ranked Test nations played four Tests and the results were 4 wins for England over India by the following margins: an innings and 8 runs, an innings and 242 runs, 319 runs and 196 runs. Did India play high-quality cricket? Was the series closely-fought?

An obvious solution to the problem of how to close the divide between Full Members and non-Full Members would be to organise a Test Premier League and a Division 1, each division consisting of between 6-10 teams with promotion and relegation, played over a 4 year cycle. Then having established this, if there were more nations who wanted to participate and could satisfy certain specific and clear criteria, organise a Division 2 and so on. For those who agonise over such things, the Premier League could be 'Test matches' and Division 1 'first-class'.

The reason why cricket won't organise itself along these lines (in the absence of any credible other evidence), is due to the selfishness and greed of the existing Full Members and the flawed governance structure which accommodates them. It has very little to do with Associates and Affiliates ability or otherwise to play 'closely fought' matches.

It is the failure of the book to address the issue of overcoming the divide between Full and other members in a credible way that is the book's weakness.

The book's strength is as a comprehensive book of record for the Intercontinental Cup and in that respect it is very solid and a welcome development.

                             Liam Rooney

 ICC Intercontinental Cup and ICC Intercontinental Shield by Roy Morgan is published by the Association of Cricket Statisticians and Historians, 2011. Price is £25.