The International Cricket Council (ICC) on Thursday confirmed Ireland and Afghanistan as full members of the world cricket body, making them eligible to play all forms of international cricket, including Tests with other cricket playing nations.
With this decision, Afghanistan and Ireland become the 11th and 12th members of Test match cricket’s close-knit club.
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It’s been almost two decades since Bangladesh was the last country to be granted Test status.
Earlier, ICC CEO David Richardson said that both Afghanistan and Ireland have impressive credentials to be made full members of the world cricket body.
“It’s never wise to try and make a call too early, but certainly the applications of both are very well founded. They both, on the face of it, meet the majority, if not all, of the full member criteria that have been set. I’m optimistic that they’ll be given serious consideration to having every chance of succeeding,” Richardson was quoted, as saying.
Afghanistan’s first contact with the sport took place during the 1980s and 1990s, as refugees fled to Pakistan to escape the Soviet invasion.
Cricket struggled under the hardline Islamist Taliban, who viewed sports as a distraction from religious duties – and famously shaved the heads of a visiting Pakistani football team as punishment for wearing shorts.
But it has become hugely popular in the country since the regime was toppled in a US-led invasion in 2001.
Recent successes, particularly in last year’s ICC World Twenty20, have further raised the country’s profile.
Spinners Rashid Khan, who idolises former Pakistan international Shahid Afridi, and Mohammad Nabi both made their mark in the Indian Premier League.
Khan was the sixth-highest wicket-taker in his debut IPL with 17 scalps, and the pair broke into the top 10 of the ICC one-day international bowling rankings during the just-concluded tour of the West Indies.
Their former batting coach and former Pakistan skipper Rashid Latif said a place among the Test nations was well deserved and would benefit them in the future.
“Afghanistan deserves Test status because their performances are good. Once they get to play Tests, more and more players will come forward just like happened in Sri Lanka and Bangladesh – Kenya suffered because they were not awarded,” he told AFP.
“I think it will be the ICC‘s best decision of the century.”
Last year, Afghanistan’s national team shifted its base from Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates to Noida, Delhi, while India’s former batsman Lalchand Rajput replaced Pakistan’s Inzamam-ul-Haq as their national team coach.
There are nevertheless questions about how well Afghanistan and Ireland will do in the game’s longest format.
Bangladesh famously floundered for their first decade while New Zealand took 26 years to win their first Test.
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Ireland, meanwhile, has beaten the West Indies, England and Pakistan in their time.
However, standing on the verge of Test status is a far cry from the years when the highlight of Ireland’s season was the visit for a one-off match by the touring Test team to England or, in alternate years, a two-day game at Lord’s against MCC, invariably made up of Minor County players.
The old Irish Cricket Union was founded in 1855 — Phoenix Cricket Club, founded 25 years earlier, is one of the oldest in the British Isles – but it was not until more than a century later that the Ireland team first made the rest of the cricket world take notice.