With just three members: Australia, England and South Africa, at the time of its’ inception in 1909, the ICC now operates with 104 members. Preaching the motto: Cricket for good, the ICC is immensely walking squarely each passing day. Interestingly, the long list of 104 members is divided into two segments: Full Members and Associate Members. Full Members are the governing bodies for cricket in a country or a
group of associated countries representing a geographical area. The full Member nations are automatically qualified to play ODIs and T20s; whereas Associate Members are countries where cricket is firmly established. Among them, 12 are the Full member and the rest 92 are the Associate one.
However, in 2007, a novel step was taken and World Cricket League was administered by ICC, which formulated the One Day International matches of 50 overs to be played among the Associate members. The scheme of the tournament is decided by following the round robin method in which each team faces all the other teams at least once. The WCL is further classified into divisions in which the nations play at different levels accordingly, as the consistently performing teams would eventually upgrade to Full Members, as the WCL operates on a system of promotion and relegation. Teams that perform well get promoted from lower division to higher division and so forth; and the non-performing ones are relegated. ICC WCL Division Three is contested as a standalone tournament rather than as an actual league. It was first held in 2007, hosted by the ICC World Cup champion, 2007, Australia. Till date, 18 teams have featured in the tournament. A number of eight teams got featured at the commencement point and six other teams were presented in the subsequent editions as per the rules of the WLC. Looking out at the performance table, Uganda has successfully qualified for the division six times out of the seven occasions the tournament has been held, while the United States qualified five times. Surprisingly, Nepal has played at Division Three just two times and landed on the top of the table on both accounts. Likewise, Oman won the tournament twice out of their four qualified occasions. The latest instalment of ICC WCL Division Three was held in November, 2018 at Oman. A total of 15 matches were played among the six teams. Out of the six, two teams: Oman and United States got promoted to Division Two to be held next year, and the rest of teams: Kenya, Uganda, Singapore, and Denmark got relegated to ICC Cricket World Cup Champion League. Oman performed without a pinch of error and finished unbeaten in all five of their fixtures and United States making it their first time by being promoted to Division Two.
ICC WCL Division Three
Almost a century ago, 109 years to be precise, it was a single man’s vision and effort that led to the establishment of the massive body of International Cricket Council. In 1907, Abe Bailey, President, South African Cricket Association suggested the formation of an Imperial Cricket Board to regulate the matches.