Kenya and Canada contest a battle of no-hopers on Monday, but both are determined to prove that the decision to drive them into the World Cup wilderness is wrong. The two non-Test playing teams are languishing at the bottom of Group A without a point after having lost three games each.
Their performances have added weight to the International Cricket Council's decision to chop the number of teams to 10 from 14 for the next World Cup. However, Kenya wicket-keeper Maurice Ouma believes the ICC will be throwing money away by its decision. "They have pumped in huge money with its High Performance Development Programmes. With this decision, their entire programme will go to waste," he said.
The middle-order batsman said the ICC should work towards creating more opportunities for the minnows to play leading nations on a consistent basis.
"The associate nations should be given more opportunity to play Test playing countries on a regular basis and not once in four years," said Ouma. "We really deserve to be there considering the fact that we consistently played in the last five World Cups. We have qualified for the World Cups more than any other nation." Ireland are the only associate nation who have managed to throw the form book out of the window and script an upset win, against England in Bangalore last week.
Canada had a golden chance to imitate Ireland against Pakistan when they bowled their rivals out for a below-par 184 following some inspired bowling led by medium-pacer Harvir Baidwan.
But the opportunity was squandered with Ashish Bagai's men folding up for 138 in 42.5 overs despite being comfortably placed at 104-3 at one point.
Bagai refused to play the minnow card when explaining his team's 46-run defeat and accepted that his side had no answers to the leg-spin of Shahid Afridi, who picked a match-winning 5-23.
"Our batting let us down, we just played poorly during our chase," said Bagai. "It was a good toss to lose as the wicket had become better as the game progressed but Afridi took it away from us.
"Ireland played pretty bravely against England and that's why losing against Pakistan was more disappointing." Kenya were whacked by 10 wickets by New Zealand before being hammered by Pakistan and Sri Lanka in one-sided encounters.
"Our big concern is we are not batting out our 50 overs," Kenyan captain Jimmy Kamande said. "That's the one area we want to work on very, very hard because you can't win matches without batting your full quota of overs."