The decision to introduce a preliminary round to the T20 World Cup has angered many. It introduces an additional obstacle to associate progress but also backtracks on the ICC's commitment to balance restricted opportunities in the 50 over format, where it will be 10 teams from 2019, with greater exposure in T20.

To understand this decision we have to go back to the 2007 World Cup where Ireland had the temerity to knock out Pakistan. This was a momentous day, not only for Ireland but for the development programme. But media partners told the ICC in no uncertain terms that this could not be allowed to happen again. So Ireland and others have been a victim of their own success. The ICC have been placed in an impossible situation, seeking to comply with the wishes of media partners while providing opportunities for associates, and therefore validating the development programme.

For many years leading commentators on the non test world, mainly on this site, have advocated the principle that leading associates should compete with weaker full members. This will, the argument goes, enable them to showcase their progress and prove they can compete with those in the top ten. It could also, though this would be uncomfortable for the ICC to swallow, show that weaker full members are not playing to a standard that expected of a full member. But that takes us down a Woolf cul-de-sac, and we'll stay clear of that for now.

It is important to recognise when reflecting on an albeit disappointing decision that this principle has been adopted. The precedent has been set and we can therefore be confident that whatever the number of teams world cups are limited to associates will have an opportunity to qualify. It is not ideal situation, of course, and campaigning for a greater number of teams should and will continue. But if you want to influence a system, you first have to understand a system and the pressures that are exerted on it.

It is also a perception issue, linked to a marketing one. Some report that this is a pre-qualifier, others that it is a first round. This depends, largely, on logistics and timings, but also crucially on how the ICC present and market it. If there is to be a stand-alone qualification tournament sitting above the existing qualification structure then lets ensure it produces high quality, competitive cricket. And furthermore lets ensure that as many people as possible can view it, be inspired by it, have their preconceptions of associates as meek minnows challenged by it.

Opportunity is a subjective term defined largely by the positivity required to recognise and seize it. If Ireland or another leading team can qualify from this ‘first round' or ‘pre-qualifying' then they will enter the main stages of the tournament with full member scalps, invaluable competitive match time and a growing army of fans and champions (if tournament is televised/streamed and promoted). These are good outputs, for the national board, the HPP programme and the overarching objective to develop the global game.

There will be many who remain cynical, and I, like them and indeed the ICC development programme, advocate the extension of world cup places to teams and a parallel extension of ODI status and the HPP programme. But if this is, at this moment in time, the situation then far better to seize the opportunities it presents.

And there is another potential outcome of this. In endorsing the principle that associates should be allowed to test themselves against weaker full members the ICC are dangling a particularly large and succulent carrot. This should, for instance, support more bi-lateral tournaments with weaker full members through TAPP funding. But there is a bigger, harder fought for goal than that. For it opens the door to these contests being played at first class level (I dare not say ‘test', as that is surely one of the most emotionally loaded terms in cricket). If that is an indirect consequence of the establishment of pre-qualifying, then in the longer term, when the frustration has dissipated, we may find ourselves in a stronger position.