As part of its annual jamboree, the ICC has announced it is backtracking on its original decision to reduce the next 50-over World Cup to just 10 teams. Instead, the tournament, to be held in Australia and New Zealand in 2015, will comprise 14 sides, as it did when the World Cup trophy was last on offer, earlier this year.

The decision comes as a blow to Cricket Australia, which is in the early stages of assembling an organising committee for the tournament. For them, a reduction to ten teams, all full ICC Members, would have reduced the potential for ‘dead rubbers' between sides where the conclusion is foregone, and increased television ratings and gate receipts for an increased number of attractive-looking fixtures.

The ritual slaughter of non-Test playing nations in recent World Cups has not been a good look and dulled the competition's lustre in many eyes. The group stages have served little competitive purpose other than to take around a month establishing exactly what the knockout pairings will be. Critics have advised audiences to forget the tournament is even taking place until the quarterfinals, the point at which the 8 major nations start taking the thing seriously.

The counter argument is that without exposure at the highest level, the Associate Nations - the likes of Ireland, the Netherlands and Kenya - will not progress beyond their current levels of performance and, crucially, not aspire to. As Cricket Ireland Chief Executive Warren Deutrom put it: "The one thing that we shouted out more loudly than anything else is 'meritocracy' - not 'we want to be given this as a right', but 'we want the opportunity to be better.'"

Should the ICC then be commended for preserving the opportunity for the underdogs to compete at the highest level? Unfortunately not, as the decision owes as much to horse-trading and politics as it does to fair play and a desire to grow the game.

Alongside the 2015 World Cup vote, the ICC conference was concerned with a number of other issues. Understandably this creates a situation whereby members organise themselves into aligned voting blocs to ensure the passage or blockage of the range of motions. Once these have been established, the serious negotiations can take place to determine which blocs will be persuaded to back alternative views and for what benefits.

If all this sounds like politics 101, this seemingly simple democratic process is made more complex when accommodating the role of India in such negotiations.

India is by some margin the highest-grossing box office attraction in the game, and as Sharda Ugra reported for Cricinfo this week, "It is important to note that seven of the ten Full Member nations (excluding Pakistan, Sri Lanka and India) will draft new television deals in the next 12 months."

With vital financial deals on the table, members would be crazy to risk upsetting the golden goose.

The game then becomes about establishing what India's deal-breakers are, diplomatically conceding that ground and playing the odds elsewhere. Examples of such territory at this meeting include: the removal of Hawk Eye and similar ball-tracking technology as part of the implementation of the UDRS and for the ICC to remain open to the idea of removing the current rotational process for selecting its president. (As a side note, the next president should be in office in 2014 and selected by Pakistan and Bangladesh).

This delicate scenario is complicated further by India's close relations with other members, notably Zimbabwe, which give much smaller nations power at the negotiating table, knowing they have the support of the most influential member behind them.

Consequently, when the arguments were presented regarding the 2015 World Cup, decisions were less about what was in the interests of the tournament and game development, but the interests of specific national board relationships (and lucrative commercial relationships) with India (and by extension, India's allies).

The suggestion emanating from the conference, as detailed over a series of daily updates on Cricinfo, indicates the following pattern is likely to have decided the changes to the World Cup selection criteria.

Firstly, India identified the removal of the rotational presidency of the ICC to be one of the key issues it would negotiate hard to achieve. For such a constitutional amendment to be passed, the motion would require the support of at least 8 Full Members and 38 of the 50 Associate Members. Securing 8 Full Members could be achieved using the financial imperative of playing India in the developing Future Tours Programme. The Associate Members would need an alternative motivation, and re-entry to the 2015 World Cup fit the bill.

Intelligently, the Associate Member argument to participation in the 2015 competition acknowledged the need to streamline the competition. Instead of arguing for guaranteed participation of an Associate Member, they instead lobbied to allow an Associate Member or two Associate Members, to qualify for the tournament. Such a proposal would involve Associate Members competing against the lowest ranked Full Members for entry to the World Cup. If such a proposal was ever seriously countenanced, the obvious losers in any such change would have been Zimbabwe and Bangladesh, as the lowest ranked Full Members, at risk of losing a playoff.

As Fairfax and News Ltd journalists have written and tweeted in recent days, the alliances involved in this situation ensured this was unlikely to get off the ground.

Consequently, the only option available to guarantee Associate Member support of the changes to the presidency, as well as reaffirming strategic alliances, was to reopen guaranteed World Cup spots for Associate Members.

As if to reinforce that the decision to expand the 2015 World Cup was not a decision for the greater good of the game or the long-term development of Associate Members, at the same conference the decision was taken to reduce participation in the T20 World Cup from 16 to 12 teams. This despite qualification for the 2012 version of the event already well underway. 

All of which ignores the far broader issue regarding the sustainable future of the game.

At its highest level, cricket is an exclusive ten-member cabal. If the overarching concern behind any moves to reduce the numbers of competing nations at the 2015 World Cup is to reduce the number of walkovers, why hasn't the intention all along been to improve the standard of the Associate Members so that they are in better shape to compete with the big boys when their chances arrive? Why isn't there a clearer pathway for developing nations aspiring to join the elite? If a so-called World Cup is limited to ten fixed entrants, would it even warrant such an all-embracing title?

It is safe to assume this will not be the final act in the pantomime for deciding who will take part in the 2015 World Cup. It can only be hoped that the greater good of the game is allowed to influence future decisions.