Population does play a role but so does the economic and social situation of the county. Its pointless to compare two different countries in sports.
I agree slightly.
In some ways being a poorer underdeveloped economy is significantly beneficial to a cricketing landscape, even if its not for the country overall. Lemme explain.
ICC funding which makes up the majority of income for the majority of cricket boards, is paid in US Dollars. Being a very poor economy can mean the difference between affording a fully professional domestic setup and not being able to afford it.
Look at Ireland and Afghanistan. They receive the exact same funding from the ICC and the latter has a significantly larger cricketing fanbase but the finances are still the same. Afghanistan, with their funding, in a country where the GDP per capita is 600 dollars
per year, can afford to have 200 domestic professional cricketers, people who's sole job is to play and train cricket. This naturally will lead to talented cricketers being churned out, whish explains Afghanistans continuing improvements.
In a poor economy, this guaranteed regular ICC funding makes the sport an attractive job prospect. Not so in Ireland. Ireland, outside of the top 15 who make the senior side and a handful of youngsters trying to break into that 15, have zero fully professional domestic cricketers. Zero, NZ from what I can see, although their funding is vastly bigger than Ireland or Afghanistan, suffer from a similar problem Ireland does, its a wealthy country which makes it expensive, which makes the funding disappear quicker which makes the sport as a livelihood less attractive which makes it struggle to attract people to dedicate to it as a job. I'd guess most NZ domestic cricketers are either a) young guys in college looking to break the national setup b) guys on the fringe of the national setup receiving a solid wage c) the majority, guys who are and wont be good enough internationally, but are solid FC cricketers, who are on either semi pro on summer cricketing contracts or on around an average national wage. Admittedly, Im clueless re this for NZ, maybe [MENTION=131138]Space Cat[/MENTION] can help.
To put it simply, a poor economic situation means a cricket club can offer a guy in Afghanistan 1000 dollars a year and he'd probably be fairly well off and happy. In Ireland thatd be a weekly salary, for a professional sportsperson a pretty crappy one compared to the rugby guys who can earn upwards of half a million if they reach an elite level, plus sponsorship.
In short I think Ireland and NZ have it doubly bad, the smaller population makes it harder for quality to emerge. On the plus side the lower player pool means players who are of quality receive greater coaching and emphasis than they would elsewhere. But, the wealth of these countries means that they are, on a cricketing perspective purely, significantly poorer than the subcontinental brethren as they have to pay hugely higher living costs for their domestic cricketers.
I'm not referring to international players here, obviously all international cricketers globally earn a decent packet, but rather the domestic guys without whom no cricketing system really functions. You need your hard grafters domestically to be there to keep standards up and the pipeline running, if you cant pay them enough, they wont stick around, and thats where being economically wealthy is actually a hindrance from a sporting growth perspective IMO.
Plus as Space Cat pointed out, many many a talented young pacer or batsmen here, like in NZ, is taken by rugby or other sports due to the significantly higher popularity of the sport and much greater financial power they boast.
