The associated countries are feeling a bit let-down after the ICC announced plans that the next World Cup will be reduced to 10 countries, with just two non-Test playing nations making it to the showpiece tournament.

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Most past cricketers have more or less endorsed the ICC’s plans, saying such a move will make the tournament a lot more competitive.

However, India legend Sachin Tendulkar, ICC’s global ambassador for the 2015 World Cup, has argued that the smaller nations deserve a place in such competitions.

“When you want the game to globalise, we need to encourage more and more teams to participate, obviously not at the cost of dropping the standard of play but we need to look at how we can get these guys to raise their standards. I think it is only going to rise when they start playing against the top sides,” said Tendulkar while chatting with fans on an ICC Google+ Hangout.

“I feel even if the top sides send their A-teams, India A could tour Zimbabwe, Bangladesh or Ireland, Scotland. The Australia-A or New Zealand-A team can go and play with UAE. All these teams, they need encouragement.

“I think it’s important that the top teams, the stronger ones play against all these teams as much as possible and not just during the World Cups.”

Crowd is Dhoni’s 12th man

MELBOURNE, Australia: Indian captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni was effusive in his praise for the thousands of Indian fans that turned up for their match against South Africa.

For the record, the attendance figure at the MCG on Sunday for the India-SA match (86,876) was almost 2,000 more than those that watched Australia’s opening match against England.

And Dhoni said: “Let’s give the benefit of the doubt that 20,000 of them were South African fans, but to get like over 50,000 people in Australia, I think it just adds on to atmosphere that gets created. It starts from the warm‑up, and after the National Anthem, it just multiplies.

“It’s always good to play in front of good support. Even when we are playing in India, there are stadiums that don’t have that kind of capacity.

“Definitely, we need to give a lot of credit to them. I think it’s really heartening to see people coming from all over, not only India, a lot of them are from Australia, from England and from other parts of the world. It feels good to play in front of big crowds.” 

Dhawan’s Melbourne connection

As one wit once pointed out – success has many fathers.

Almost all the Australian newspapers mentioned prominently that the 28-year-old Delhi opener spends a significant part of his year in Melbourne, since he got married to city girl Ayesha Mukherjee.

One headline in ‘The Australian’ yesterday was ‘Local Boy Dhawan hits out to be a hero of the MCG’.

Salt in South African wounds

The humiliation for AB de Villiers did not end with the 130-run loss to India.

Late that night, Match Referee Jeff Crowe fined South Africa for maintaining a slow over-rate and that they were one over short of the target after taking the time allowances into consideration.

As per the ICC Code of Conduct, all South African players were fined 10 per cent of their match fee, with the penalty doubling for the captain.

It also means that if South Africa are slow once more, de Villiers will be suspended for one match for committing two minor over-rate offences.