Maarten Westermann, the CEO of the Dutch governing body (KNCB) is not happy. And that’s putting it mildly.

Outraged as he is by the proposal to reduce the number of Associates taking part in the next World Cup from six to four, he has returned from this week’s crisis meeting with his colleagues determined to do everything in his power to resist.

‘The High Performance Program countries have been required to appoint, at considerable cost, full-time coaches and full-time CEOs,’ Westermann says, ‘and we’ve all done so.

‘And now we get this!’

The leading Associates find the situation all the more unacceptable because they have not been presented with a formal proposal, or with arguments for cutting down the size of the 2011 tournament.

 ‘How can we defend ourselves when they don’t even bother to make a case?’ he asks. ‘It looks increasingly as if a deal has been made behind closed doors, and if that is so then there’s something seriously amiss with our sport.’

Reports suggest that the idea of reverting to a fourteen-team World Cup stems from dissatisfaction with last year’s tournament in the Caribbean.

‘What was actually wrong with the 2007 World Cup?’ says Westermann. ‘Pakistan and India were eliminated after the first phase because they played badly – was that the fault of the Associates? England were weak – was that the fault of the Associates?

‘The tournament was absurdly drawn-out, especially at the Super Eight stage. The stands were empty because of the pricing of tickets. Were these things the fault of the Associates?

‘None of the things that went wrong in the Caribbean were the fault of the Associates, and yet it seems that the four host countries want to punish the Associates rather than confront the real issues.’

Westermann and his fellow-CEOs from the leading Associates are not only convinced that the proposal threatens to undermine the achievements of the ICC’s global development programme; they also question whether it would produce a more interesting competition.

‘The trend in other sports is towards larger World Cups,’ he points out. ‘There football World Cup has expanded from 24 to 32 teams, and the recent rugby union tournament proves how much expansion can bring to an event.

‘And yet it seems that in cricket the top countries want to create a cricket cartel in which they only play each other and the rest of the world is allowed to watch.’

Westermann believes that if the pattern of expansion is reversed for the 2011 World Cup, there will then be demands from the Test countries to reduce the 2015 tournament to twelve participants.

‘And that really will be cartel cricket,’ he fumes, ‘and the effective end of the global development programme.’

One consequence of this, Westermann believes, is that potential new sponsors would be put off by a tournament which was really little more than a glorified Champions’ Trophy.

The Associates CEOs also point out that contraction could have negative implications for the ICC’s hard-won provisional membership of the International Olympic Committee.

‘You have a sport which is now played in more than a hundred countries,’ says Westermann, ‘and the top ten say, “We only want to play each other”. How do you think the IOC will respond to that?’

And if IOC membership were not to be confirmed, it would have further negative consequences for cricket in the member countries, for whom being in the IOC can transform their relationship with their national Olympic committees.

The ten countries which have already qualified for next year’s World Cup qualifying tournament have agreed to fight to retain the sixteen-team status quo when the ICC’s CEOs’ Committee meets in Kuala Lumpur next month. But Westermann would like to see the ICC go further.

‘What are the objectives that we should be looking to achieve?’ he asks, immediately providing his own answer: ‘A further step towards cricket becoming a truly world game, the host countries staying in the tournament longer, more games for the Test countries, an exciting tournament, a less drawn-out tournament, and an attractive tournament for television and media.’

The Dutch CEO has been evolving a plan which he believes ticks all those boxes more effectively than the alternatives.

It would involve eighteen teams, divided into three groups of six in the initial phase. That would mean 45 group matches, followed by a knock-out competition among the top eight, giving a total of 52 games.

 ‘It would mean that you could schedule matches for every day,’ Westermann points out, ‘and with two matches a day the first phase would last 23 days, with plenty to play for right up to the end.

‘Every participant would be guaranteed at least five matches, Test countries would be involved every day, and twelve of the group games would pit two Test countries against each other.

‘With the top two sides from each group plus the two best third-placed teams going through, there would be plenty of competition all the way through.’

He adds that a six-team round-robin would reduce the chances of one poor performance effectively putting one of the leading contenders out of the tournament, while at the same time enabling eight qualifiers to build up more experience at the top level.

No fan of the Super Six or Super Eight formulas which have been tried in the two previous tournaments, Westermann floats an interesting alternative way of building in a longer second phase.

 ‘Why not introduce best-of-three series from the quarter-finals onwards?’ he suggests. ‘Even that would only give a maximum of 66 matches, and the tournament could still be shorter than the marathon in the Caribbean.’

After all the investment in money and time which has been made in the development of cricket over the past few years, it beggars belief that the ICC appears ready to renege on the promises it has made to its ninety-odd members who stand outside the charmed circle of Test cricket.

But it is not too late for the game’s controlling forces to prove that the Associates’ CEOs’ worst fears are groundless, and that the ICC really is committed to making cricket a world game which can justify its place in the Olympic family.