Ireland's World Cup was a success but many Associate nations struggled to compete © Getty Images

The proposal made by the ICC chief executive's committee to reduce the next World Cup from 16 to 14 teams "isn't great news for the Associates" according to Warren Deutrom, the chief executive of the Irish Cricket Union.

One of the major complaints of the 2007 tournament in West Indies was the number of one-sided matches during the 47-day event. Ireland enjoyed a memorable experience, beating Pakistan and forcing a tie with Zimbabwe to move into the Super Eight stage, where they overcame Bangladesh, but the other Associate countries didn't come out in a great light.

However, Deutrom says people are expecting the next rung of countries to become competitive too soon. "It is a move we both feared and expected and it's not great news for the Associates," he told Cricinfo. "Neither is it a great vote of confidence in the ICC's own High Performance Programme.

"The view of the HPP countries was that with another four years of funding - two of which would see heavily increased money coming through from ICC's deal with ESS [ESPN-Star Sports] - would have seen significant improvements in the Associate countries and all would be better prepared."

He also said that the move to reduce the number of teams goes against the ICC's stated aim of expanding the game. "The ICC are also quick to say how the World Cup should be a global showcase for the sport but it's hard to see how that can happen when they cut back on countries.

"It seems to also go against the recent increase in HPP countries to 10 and it's difficult to see how the game will expand."