The 2027 Men's Cricket World Cup, which in 2021 was confirmed to be a 14 team tournament, will now be a twelve team tournament, the ICC announced yesterday.

Well, that's not quite what they announced. They claim it's still a 14 team tournament. It's just that the three lowest ranked teams in the tournament will play a tri-series - which the ICC laughably call a "Super Series" prior to the main draw, with one team joining the other 11 in the group stage.

Those with good memories will remember that the ICC have done this before with the men's T20 World Cup, where eight teams took part in a "first round" before the main draw, where commentators would get distracted by the warm-up games of the big teams.

Everybody but the terminally naive knew that was just another qualifier, and the same applies now. The 2027 World Cup in South Africa, Zimbabwe and Namibia (put your money on Namibia's only hosted matches being this "Super Series") will be a twelve team event.

Dutch international Max O'Dowd perhaps best summed up the likely universal associate opinion in a post on X (formerly Twitter), stating "So you’re telling me, associate sides have to play in a 3 year 50 over tournament, to qualify for a qualifier to qualify for another tri-series qualifier to then qualify for a World Cup."

The ICC press release claims that this is being done to "create more meaningful contests, elevate competitive standards, strengthen the competitive structure of both events, and enhance the tournament experience for athletes and fans". Reading beyond that marketing guff to look at the new format gives us an idea of the real reason.

Netherlands players celebrating during their win against South Africa in 2023 in scenes unlikely to repeated in 2027 (ICC)

After the so-called Super Series decides the twelfth qualifier for the World Cup, we will have two groups of six. You might think the World Cup will then proceed as in 1999 where the next stage will be a Super Six with teams carrying points forward. Well you'd be wrong. Instead the next stage will be a Super Seven stage (is a Super seven more Super than a Super Series?), with the top three in each group plus the best fourth place team all playing each other in a round robin, with no points carried forward.

Of course we all know India and Pakistan will be in the same first round group, and this format gives them a very good chance of meeting a second time in the Super Seven stage. There have been murmurs of a reduction in broadcast revenues for future World Cups, so it appears that the ICC have shoe-horned an extra India v Pakistan fixture into the World Cup to boost its value.

After the Super Seven (I'm getting tired of typing the world Super now) will be the semi-finals and final and you can bet ICC are hoping for a third India v Pakistan game in that brief knockout stage too.

Rather than consider the real reason India v Pakistan is such a big game at World Cups (its relative scarcity as a fixture) or adequately promote international cricket, the ICC have instead chosen to compromise notions of fairness and equity in order to please broadcasters who don't necessarily have the overall health of the game in mind.

The World Cup qualifier, with a history dating back to 1979 and once the crown-jewel of the associate calendar - indeed until the 21st century the only event ICC organised for associate teams - has been relegated to being a pre-qualifier for a three team qualifier.

It also seems likely that the planned expansions of the Women's ODI and T20 World Cups - to 10 and 16 teams respectively are also at risk - the ICC obviously don't mind changing formats that have previously been agreed.

It's typical in articles like this to lay all the blame at the Board of Control for Cricket in India. ICC = BCCI is a common refrain. But we shouldn't let the other full members escape blame. They're too gutless to stand up to the BCCI and likely feel that this format will help retain what they see as their divine right to sit at the top of the game, priorotising short term gains over the long-term health of the sport. It's rotten all the way down.

The T20 World Cup has also been reformatted, though it thankfully remains a 20 team tournament. The first round will now be five groups of four instead of four groups of five teams. This will be followed by a Super (there's that world again) 10 stage featuring the top two teams from each group divided into two groups of five.

The knockout phase has also been expanded beyond the semi-finals, though the ICC's phobia of quarter finals hasn't quite ended yet. The second stage group winners will go straight to the semi-finals, with cross over matches between the second and third place teams taking place to decide the other two semi-finalists.

It's not a great format, and teams eliminated after the first stage now play one game fewer, but it does increase the chances of an associate team making the second stage, and appears to lay the groundwork for a future expansion to 24 teams.

The big change here is to qualifying, with the return of the global qualifier confirmed. Eight of the associate teams elminated in the first round have been seeded in this tournament, with Scotland missing out owing to the special circumstances of their participation earlier this year after Bangladesh pulled out at the last minute. They will instead be seeded in the regional final.

Two teams from each of Europe, Asia and Africa plus one each from Americas and East-Asia Pacific will join those eight teams in the 16 team qualifier.

There is, of course, a twist here. The eight teams that qualify for the main event in Australia and New Zealand will not necessarily be the best eight teams. Instead, the best peforming team from each region will qualify subject to meeting a currently undefined performance standard. A minimum of three teams will then qualify based on tournament performance.

This means that the one EAP side in the tournament is handed a massive advantage, and also that it's quite possible for a team in the top eight of the tournament to not qualify when a worse performing team to qualify. It could get messy to follow the tournament.

Elsewhere at the ICC meeting - though not all of this has been formally revealed by the ICC - plans for an expansion of the World Test Championship to include Zimbabwe, Afghanistan and Ireland have been delayed pending a review by a global management consultants firm (one of the worst three world phrases in the English language) which will be completed in November. Rumours abound of bilateral ODI cricket being severely cut back, though a suggestion to change ODIs to 40 over contests - one that seems to come up every few years - appears to have been rejected.

Mauritius has become the ICC's 111th - and 99th associate member, Cricket Canada have had reinstatement conditions confirmed (USA also remain suspended) and France have been placed "on notice".

Another announcement out of the ICC AGM was the decision to work towards the exiled Afghanistan women's team participating in ICC pathway events by 2030. This is, to give the ICC some credit, an undoubted good news story, though the subsequent announcement of the men's ODI World Cup format left somewhat of a sour aftertaste.