We need more teams in World Cup: Tendulkar

Not quite convinced about the ICC’s plans to truncate the World Cup to 10 teams, retired former batting great Sachin Tendulkar feels the governing body should instead look to enhance the skills of so-called minnows. “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 standard of playing and I think the standard of playing is only going to rise when they start playing against the top sides,” Tendulkar said in ICC’s first ever ‘Google Hangout’. “For that sake, I feel even if the top sides send their A-teams, India A could tour Zimbabwe, Bangladesh or Ireland, Scotland and all these teams they need encouragement. For UAE say, Australia-A or New Zealand-A team can go and play with UAE get them that encouragement,” he suggested. Tendulkar also added, “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. To play against them every four years I think we need to look into it and look to encourage them more by making them play international games against top sides.”